The Big Picture - The Monster Movie Hall of Fame and 'The Invisible Man' | The Big Picture

Episode Date: February 28, 2020

To celebrate the release of 'The Invisible Man,' Leigh Whannell's clever reimagining of the classic Universal monster movie, Adam Nayman joins the show to help construct a shrine to the greatest creatures, ghouls, aliens, oversized apes, and ineffable spirits in film history (1:03). Then, Whannell joins Sean to talk about the making of his new movie, casting Elisabeth Moss as the protagonist of the story, and the unlikely inspirations he channeled (47:30). Hosts: Sean Fennessey Guest: Adam Nayman and Leigh Whannell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelley, and welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. For the next eight weeks, the Rewatchables will be covering eight films that are incredibly rewatchable despite having one major flaw. So far, we've covered the movie Higher Learning, and this Wednesday, Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Ryan Rusillo are talking about the 1985 wrestling classic Vision Quest. So make sure and check out the flawed Rwatchables on the rewatchables feed on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Sean Fennessey, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about monsters and how they

haunt us. Later in the show, I'll have an interview with Lee Whannell the writer-director behind the new, updated iteration of The Invisible Man, a movie that shifts the perspective of the classic horror movie to the victim, in this case played by the amazing Elizabeth Moss. Winnell's a clever genre craftsman, and we had a fun chat about how he's reinventing the work of the historic Universal Monster movies and some of his 80s filmmaker heroes like James Cameron and Paul Verhoeven and John Carpenter. But first, I am joined by Ringer contributor and one of the best film minds around, Adam Naiman. Thanks for joining me, Adam. Hey, thanks for having me. Adam, we're here to build another wing in the Movie Hall of Fame. Today, we set post and beam on the Monster Movie Hall of Fame. Now, you know, monster movies are tricky because there, I think, are two distinctions between them. One is your classical scare movie

that enraptures audiences, but maybe doesn't really mean very much. And then the other is the load-bearing metaphorical monster that communicates something to the world about maybe its ills or human psychology or things of that nature. I assume that you are more a fan of the latter, but maybe that's not the case. I think I'm a fan of the latter when it's less calculated. You know, the joke I like to tell is one day someone's going to make a really good specific movie about a social problem, like a documentary, and then at a press conference, the director, she's going to be like, this movie's a metaphor for zombies, which I think I'm just waiting for someone to do. But I mean, I think that in the last couple of years, because you have someone like Jordan

Peele who has spoken, not in terms of monster movies, but in terms of horror movies, he's talked about his fondness for those social thrillers or social horror movies and the metaphorical dimension to them. And so, because monsters are a subset of horror movies, and as you say, a delivery device for scares, those streams often do cross. But yeah, I mean, I think some of the best monster movies of all time are definitely ones where monsters represent something, whether it's something inside or outside society or something inside or outside people. But I'm also just a big fan of movies where like spooky things jump out at people and eat them. So it's a fine balance.

Before we get started on constructing this list that we've put together here, do you remember your first monster movie experience? The movie that felt like a monster movie to me, and I mean, it is a monster, is when Pinocchio gets swallowed by the whale. Oh, yeah. Which is obviously, you know, I mean, there's a biblical reference there to Jonah and the whale, and it's, you know, like for kids who see Pinocchio, that whale is just nightmarish and terrifying and gigantic. I mean, my dad, I think that's the first movie he ever took me to, and it just absolutely scared the hell out of me.

That and the giant squid in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, same thing. Oh, great. Some Disney Spawn Con there. Well done by you. And for you? Well, I'm thinking about pinocchio as you say it and the thing that scared me more than the whale is the sequence in which the boys turn into donkey boys which is just absolutely disturbing and also kind of metaphorical in its way uh not to put too fine a parasite point on it hmm i'm trying to think of my first true scary movie experience. I feel like what I got to young Frankenstein before I got to Frankenstein. And it's funny how when something like that

happens, how it can obscure your relationship to movies. And I think it actually made me, um, not so much scared in movie theaters, but just, just sort of happy and smiling and laughing. I tend to laugh at horror movies and at monster movies because I get a kind of perverse thrill out of them. And if Young Frankinson can count, that would be my number one. I mean, obviously I saw a bunch of the movies that we'll talk about here on this list at a very young age, and maybe that's an opportunity to just go right into it. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to go chronologically. So there's obviously a long history. I would say monster movies are essentially as old as movies themselves. So we're going to try to walk through essentially, I don't know, 80, 90 years of movie history

and try to capture what are the absolute most representative, interesting, compelling, fascinating monster movies ever made. And the monsters, I think the conversation should really be about the monsters inside of the movies and why they're so effective as devices for either sending those messages or just scaring the shit out of us. So you've chosen five. I've chosen five. inside of the movies and why they're so effective as devices for either sending those messages or just scaring the shit out of us. So you've chosen five, I've chosen five. We're going to riff and vamp a little bit. Why don't you give me your first pick going all the way back to the 1930s? Sure. And it's interesting because now when we've got it arranged chronologically,

we've got this interesting blind spot, which could kind of be filled in as we go along, which is we've both bypassed the true initial cohort of universal monster movies, right? The very late 20s, very early 30s, because the first movie on my list is King Kong. So I have bypassed Dracula, Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, which are all these enduring literary properties that have been made and remade for a long time. And I think the thing about King Kong is it just feels like the primal scene for me of Monster as spectacle because he's not human-sized, right? He's not an actor in a costume. He's not someone doing an accent or wearing makeup. He's a special effects creation. And the thing about the original King Kong, every time I watch it, is it is just so

spectacular visually in an analog era. The integration of those stop motion special effects into old sets and the exaggerated camera angles on the actors and just the surrealism of it. I've read that the actual surrealists, the practicing artists within that movement were huge fans of King Kong, for one thing, because the monster just keeps changing size, you know? Yes, it's a bit inconsistent. It's inconsistent, but it's also just stunning because from scene to scene, you know, when he's just represented by a giant hand or a giant foot or the close-ups on the eyes. And then you can also still cut back at these around in the middle of modernity causing chaos. It's just like the deepest core horror fantasy, you know, that I can think of. I just think it's absolutely astonishing, and I never tire of watching it.

It's funny. I think a lot of the monsters on our list get repeated and reused and recontextualized over and over again. The thing with King Kong is, is the actual character of King Kong comes up over and over and over and over again. We're getting another King Kong movie this year. And for whatever reason, I would say between King Kong and Godzilla, those are really the only two significant monsters that we never tire of somehow that don't expire.

You know, I think that the idea behind what King Kong represents, and there's obviously been an extraordinary amount of both academic, critical, and just fun writing about what happens when colonialists enter a less developed world and attempt to steal things from it. But in addition to that, it is this grand spectacle. And we talk a lot on the show about, does a movie have a reason to be seen in a movie theater? And I feel like the original King Kong is one of the landmark achievements and you have to see this on a giant screen. There's nowhere else for it to be seen. Well, for sure. And I think maybe just in terms of bridging King Kong with those other brand name monsters of the period, he engenders the same kind of complex sympathy that you have with Boris Karloff's Frankenstein, right? I mean, you even have a rhyme in those two movies where in Frankenstein, he picks the little girl up by the river without doing what he's doing

and drowns her accidentally. And certainly King Kong's intentions towards Fay Wray aren't violent. They're sort of chivalrous or desirous or somewhere in between there. I think the reason he endures and even the point that Godzilla as a character eventually got bent in King Kong's direction, because the original Godzilla is not anthropomorphized and sympathetic at all. And then over the years, they made Godzilla more like King Kong. I think being inside that sort of like destructive force, but you're also misunderstood and you're more a victim of circumstance than anything else.

That's a really appealing escapist fantasy for film goers. I even think in the original King Kong, as terrifying as it is and as brutal as the violence is like, if people have never seen it, he smushes people into goo on screen, you know. You're still kind of with him. And I think that that's what a really great monster movie needs on some kinds of great monster movies need that. You need that possible level of identification or sympathy so it's not just purely a nightmare. And I think the original King Kong does that just amazingly well. So your next pick actually doesn't do the former

thing that you were just describing, which is there's no crushing, there's no goo, there's no absolute violence of a kind in your next pick. What's your next movie? The next movie I have is Cat People, which is part of a cycle of really low-key atmospheric horror movies produced mostly in the 1940s by a guy named Val Lewton. And I would say that if you get a chance to see Kent Jones' documentary, Val Lewton, Man in the Shadows, I think it's the best documentary I've ever seen about a filmmaker. Particularly about how Lewton changed horror movies by using the lack of a budget and the lack of franchisable characters. You know, he, he didn't have the roster that universal was working with of all these all

star, you know, horror icons. So he made it less is more. It's the, it's the, the, the,

the cinema of, of, of suggestion and, and scary to surround the edges. But it's also a movie about people transforming into cats. It's a movie that plays the ambiguity of is this or isn't this real for a long time, but it really does give over to the idea that the main character, the heroine, does when stimulated or afraid actually transform into a cat due to this Eastern European

mysticism. And it's also a movie, I'm sure this will come up later, that gets remade in the 80s and completely literalized because instead of just, you know, talking about someone turning into a cat or remembering someone turning into a cat, You actually see it on screen with special effects. And it's less effective to me. Do you like the Paul Schrader version that you're describing, the 80s version? And it's actually not as full on like latex hydraulic special effects as other movies from the period. But I love the original. Are you fond of the loot films? This one's directed by Jacques Turner, who did a bunch of the other ones. Is it a couple of them many, many years ago. And then actually over Halloween this year, my wife and I were looking and, you know, as I get older, Halloween's getting more and more difficult to program if we're not going to rewatch something. But we watched a couple of movies. We watched The Criterion Collection had The Ghost Ship, which I had never seen, which I thought has a very similar approach to kind of what's happening in the shadows,

which is most of his films are using that strategy of not showing the thing. And then I watched by myself, The Body Snatcher, and both of them I thought were pretty great. I mean, this is also a case where I probably saw Kent Jones's documentary before seeing any of the films. And while that was a great thing for my film education, it also kind of warped my perception of the movie because I was seeing it as a kind of intellectual exercise in a way where I understood technique as opposed to some of these other movies that we're going to talk about here, where I just happened to be nine years old when I saw it and it completely reorganized my brain chemistry in a way. But I do like his movies and especially this one that you've chosen.

Well, and also just the last thing to say, but it may be is that because it's not special effects and spectacle, it anticipates where horror movies would go in the 60s with the idea of the monster within, right? I mean, here it's not an invading ape or vampire. It's the idea of a woman whose subconscious and her inner life motivates this transformation. So it's kind of about the link between monstrousness and desire and monstrousness and repression, which is why it tends to be pretty beloved academically. But I mean, by the 60s, neither of us talk about these movies, but you start having the idea of the human monster in movies like Psycho or whatever else. And you can kind of trace a line from the way cat people stages horror towards that stuff i think i think that's right and i think it's probably a cat people's nifty double feature with the peg

for this film the invisible man because that movie is also as much about what isn't there as what is there for sure so your next pick is very surprising to me and i'm excited to hear you talk about it because this is the one movie and you've mentioned the universal movie monsters this is the one movie, and you've mentioned the Universal movie monsters. This is the one movie that I just never really got. And why don't you tell us what it is? I love the Jack Arnold creature from the Black Lagoon from 1954. And I love it partially because of the movies that you can feel echoes of it in that are good. And I also admire it because of the films that I think fail it in some way. I mean, when you look at the scenes where the aquatic Amazonian fish guy is stalking the heroine by swimming underneath her, you see all the visual language that Spielberg would develop in Jaws.

And you have echoes of King Kong, because basically the monster hasn't done anything wrong. He just lives in the jungle and these stupid scientists are coming and bugging him and trying to bring him home. But I also think it's the movie that Guillermo del Toro references most directly in Shape of Water. And I think by switching the point of view of the movie, he kind of wrecks it. I think that in Creature from the Black Lagoon, those scenes where the monster is stalking her are complex and tricky in the way that King Kong is maybe. And in Shape of Water, he makes it too clear that it's a misunderstood monster, that

it's a hero, that it's a god, that it's endearing, that it's somebody for us to like. I think Del Toro is very honest about how much he loves Creature from the Black Lagoon. He loves it so much that he kind of drains the juice out of it, which is funnily enough how I felt about Peter Jackson and King Kong as well. He just loves it so much that he makes a three-hour movie where he just can't kill King Kong. It just takes him forever to actually throw him off the building. And just as a movie itself, I just think it's wonderfully enjoyable. It's like 70 minutes long and I love the music and the underwater sequences are really beautiful. It's funny that you frame it that way too, because you've got

two picks later in the show that do the opposite of what you're describing. They are iterative remakes or reboots of previous ideas, but they actually expand and they improve upon the origin the original source material and you know i i listeners of the show know that i'm not no big shape of water fan though i do love virtually all of del toro's other movies um and so i've always found it sort of confounding that that is the one for which people decided to celebrate him the most but like if we're making a wing to the, if the monster movie is a wing to the movie museum, I mean, he should be the tour guide, right?

Absolutely. I'm not, I'm not as much of a fan of him as you are, but in Toronto, the art gallery of Ontario did his sort of bleak house, whatever it was, you know, art installation and his own narration and, and writing about monsters is so eloquent and smart, but how they function as metaphor and the monsters that he loves from Frankenstein on down. And a movie like Pan's Labyrinth, which neither of us chose, obviously has incredibly memorable monsters, both in terms of their character and just their design and execution, right? I mean,

he's a big figure in the modern history of monster movies. I agree. That would have been a great, that's a good honorable mention. Maybe we'll swing back to that. Let's talk about a movie that you've referenced a couple of times here already, and which has a direct relationship to the Creature from the Black Lagoon. It's obviously 1975's Jaws. I don't know if it necessarily has the same horror movie hallmarks that the first three films that we're talking about have, and nor does it have the universal movie monster, I don't know, filigree on five. It's obviously so overwhelmingly influential as a piece of art and

as a piece of pop entertainment that it's almost difficult to describe what it means. But for me, it's a no-brainer as a choice because I think what it does is it synthesizes everything that has come before it in a lot of ways. It has taken that idea of, and some of these were practical choices, but it takes the idea of don't show until you absolutely have to. It takes the idea of uncommon suspense. It takes the idea of going into an unknown world and tangling with its greatest foe. It takes the idea of tribalism and localism, and it has pure monster power. You know, Jaws is obviously one of the great movie characters ever created. So you quibbled with this.

You didn't choose this, and I was shocked to hear why. So what's your case against Jaws? I'll never – I can't make a case against Jaws. It's my favorite movie of all time. I just left it off my list because I made the semi-arbitrary choice to sort of not have, I guess, you know, animals or natural world antagonists on my list. And then I even realized there's a bit of a contradiction there with King Kong. But I mean, I guess what's fascinating with the shark and jaws on the timeline is it's coming after this period of highly metaphorical monster movies. You know, you have Godzilla's stand in

for atomic anxiety. You have the Romero's zombies are the return of the repressed. I mean, even The Exorcist, to some extent, is this generational parable about don't let your teenage girls associate with the wrong, I don't know, demons. And then Jaws shows up and all the metaphors are gone. What's the line Richard Dreyfuss has? It's just a perfect machine. It eats, sleeps, and makes little sharks. That's all. And everyone tried in the 70s to ascribe this metaphorical dimension to the shark where they're like, is it the economy or is it Martin Brody's sexual paranoia?

If you read papers on Jaws, people have tried to imbue the shark with all kinds of meaning. But I love the film because the shark doesn't mean anything. It's just this blank, terrifying antagonist. And it doesn't even mean anything to Quint. Quint is like the Ahab character who wants to kill the shark because it's personal. And when the shark eats him, there's nothing personal about it. It's just wrong place, wrong place, wrong time. But I mean, I'll never make a case against Jaws. I've seen it a hundred times and I'll show it to my kid and I love it. I think it's a rare case where it's not the monster that represents something. It's everything else that represents something.

You know, it is the loss of control in worlds that we think we have conquered that I think is so powerful about that. And what could be a more pleasant and relaxing experience than to visit a beach town in the summer. And obviously the, the absolute thrashing rejection of that in the movie is part of what's so powerful about it. And,

you know, it's also frankly a very suburban experience. And a lot of these other films are feel very, um, they're either exotic or they are urban. And Jaws is one of the true suburban nightmares in a lot of ways. Yeah, well, it turns King Kong inside out, because in King Kong, it's, you know, Kong is brought into the city and, you know, too bad if you're around. I mean, in Jaws, you kind of have to go out onto the water, otherwise you're

fine. But it does tie very smartly the economy of the town and the lifestyle to the water. Jay Hoberman's new book made a really interesting parallel between Jaws and Nashville as sort of bicentennial movies about the American need to preserve 4th of July, you know, all that all American set dressing and the sort of Watergate echoes of the mayor not wanting to acknowledge the problem of the shark and trying to cover it up. I mean, it does have a political valence to it. But, you know, it's also that opening scene. I mean, what is that opening scene but the shower scene from Psycho again? Absolutely. Just on the water instead of in a shower. Speaking of a political valence, my next pick is Dawn of the Dead from 1978 by George Romero.

You've already mentioned Romero. It's not lost on anyone who's this far into a podcast about monster movies, what zombies can represent to the world. I think rather than choose Romero's Night of the Living Dead, which of course is a historic film and a masterpiece in many ways, Dawn of the Dead works for me in the same way that Jaws works for me, which is it is also a suburban nightmare of a kind. And man, it seems dumb to say that this movie is prescient, but it is so prescient about consumer culture and about the way that we waste our time and about the desire for things that are ultimately meaningless to us. And the materialist impulse colliding with the absolutely incredible creature effects and design of this movie just makes it one of my favorite things to revisit in the world.

You know, we haven't spent a lot of time talking about Romero here on other Ringer podcasts, but what does he represent for you adam i think he's the prime mover behind this this now critical commonplace that genre movies are reflecting uh uh social reality you know when the original night of the living dead came out it's not like george romero put his finger to the wind and said you, now I'm going to make a zombie movie that's about Vietnam and racism and, and, and, uh, you know, a decade of political assassinations, but it was in the bones of the material. It was in the DNA. And you're right that it was, I think with Dawn of the Dead, it was an incredibly prescient movie because there's no way knowing that when you make it, that the eighties are going to be the Reagan

decade, you know, and this idea that you're going to have this renewed push towards consumerism and that that's going to solve all of society's problems. But he saw it coming. He's funny. And I think that if in later years, the zombie conceit had diminishing returns, it might be because he became more and more overt and obvious with the parody. I think Dawn of the Dead works well because everything you say about it is true, but it's also just insanely gory and scary and funny. And that all balances it out. And he saw the gore effects of the 80s coming as well, which is the other way that it helps bridge Night of the Living Dead, which is a pretty lo-fi production, to the point where in Dawn of the Dead, gore becomes a spectacle in and of itself.

Yeah, I think it's the masterpiece for Tom Savini, the makeup artist and stunt performer and actor and director who collaborated frequently with Romero in the 60s and in the 70s, and who people will recognize from stuff like From Dusk Till Dawn and Planet Terror and movies like that. He obviously has taken on a much more of a cult fascination over the years, but as a pure prosthetic makeup and gore effects guru, his work in this movie is so funny and so upsetting and so clever. And to watch the way he's designed a lot of these setups really makes the movie endlessly enjoyable for me. Let's go to the next pick. So speaking of design and effects, I've chosen Alien and the Xenomorph. Now, I don't strictly think of Alien as a horror movie, actually. I think of it as a lot more psychological than that. But I think that the Xenomorph and the facehugger and all of the creature effects in

that movie is really one of the astounding achievements in movie history. And the fact that it's 40 years old now and H.R. Giger's design for the films and what Ridley Scott does and the longtime development of the script by, is it Walter Hill? And who was the originator of the script? I'm forgetting. Dan O'Bannon. Dan O'Bannon, thank you. It's this completely unlikely collaboration of creative forces to make something that I think really has no precedent in modern movies.

And the creature itself, I don't even really know what that creature represents. It's a kind of confounding biological slash militaristic figure in monster movie history. And it's so unbeatable and so indestructible and so visually terrifying and also sort of sexual in its way that I find it incomparable, which is part of the reason why I felt like it was important to have it here. What do you make of the alien and the xenomorph? Well, I mean, I think that if we're talking about monster design, alien probably wins on points

because of the different iterations of the creature, right? Like the pods or the spores are amazing and the face hugger is amazing and then the small version of the alien that that that bursts out is already iconic and then you start realizing that it's getting bigger and bigger i mean that conceptually is so effective it's funny because we're we were talking about all it's such a rich mix of movies and so you think about just the general point of view in something like creature from the black lagoon where you have this woman who's very nearly undressed being stalked by this lusty fish guy. Then you have the naked woman being eaten in Jaws. I mean, at the end of Alien, you have Sigourney Weaver sort of in her underwear in the pod,

not knowing that it's there. And for the first time in this list of movies there's no identification with the monster at all that's right right like not even as much identification as you might have with norman bates watching janet lee i mean the monster and alien is truly other it's not anthropomorphic it has no human qualities you can't share its point of view they made an alien that is truly alien, you know? And some of that is the, as you say, the militaristic aspect of it, or almost the sort of like bio hardware, or it's almost like plastic qualities. It's like the interior of the ship.

So again, on a design level, it's amazing. And it has to be because there's no character there. We're not talking about a monster as character. It's like a monster as lack of character. And as the movies went on, I think they gradually, even though Aliens, the James little bit, then Prometheus ruins it a lot because the thing that I am disinterested in and part of what makes Aliens such an effective story is what you're describing. race of killing machines is doing, where they come from, what they want, other than to procreate. That's the only thing we know. Unlike Jaws, who I don't think Sympathy for Jaws is a novel I'll be working on anytime soon, but I think that you understand that the shark lives in the sea, and that we have entered the sea, and that the shark needs to eat, and that we are maybe getting in its way. With the xenomorph, there is something wholly indescribable and uncontrollable about its rage and its violence and whatever it is it's trying to do other than just move forward and grow.

And that makes it really great. I'm going to go to my next pick. Now, I don't feel a thousand percent about this pick, but I do want to use it as an opportunity to talk about a different kind of horror monster. And I chose The Evil Dead. And I chose Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead, not because it features zombies, not because it is hilarious or has incredible camera work or launches Bruce Campbell into the stratosphere of a kind, but because the Necronomicon is a kind of fascinating version of a monster

in a movie, which is fundamentally a historical object or purported to be a historical object, not unlike certain figures in The Exorcist and Pazuzu and the idea of a possessed demon that can infect an entire landscape, but also because it's a physical object and it's not really alive in any meaningful way. And we've seen a lot of bad versions of that over the years, you know, obviously like Child's Play

and the Annabelle series, and maybe not bad, but just sort of more pop entertainment versions of it. The Necronomicon is a historical religious document that is made to seem like the most evil thing in the universe in this film. And Sam Raimi kind of plays it for laughs. He plays it much more for laughs than the sequel to this movie. But even in the original, the way that the film is designed and on this incredibly low budget and the way that the book infects people and the sort of incantations that are necessary to enliven it

are kind of fascinating and feel like a new version of movie making to me. And it's inspired obviously by Romero and it's inspired by some of the more comic horror adaptations over the years, maybe Young Frankenstein, maybe some of the Abaddon Costello horror movies from the 40s. But it feels wholly unto itself in a lot of ways too. And because of that, I feel like it is such a special movie and such a special object. What do you, what do you think of the Necronomicon? Well, I mean, first of all, shout out to it being edited by a very young pre-Blood Simple, Joel Cohen. That's right. You know, who took some of the same, uh, incredibly spontaneous, funny, uh, you know, camera effects and the velocity of the camera you see that in a movie like Blood Simple a few

years later I mean I adore Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2 I think that they make a very humorous fetish of their own transgression like the film is getting off on being gross and disgusting and kind of

getting off on putting its characters through the ringer that's much more obvious in the sequel where the movie is just Absolutely. special effects revolution that we talked about starting with Dawn of the Dead. And I like that it does it slightly lower end of the budget scale and a little bit outside the industry at first. In the 70s, I think horror to some extent got pretty big and pompous and studio backed after The Exorcist with movies like The Omen and The Changeling, you know, trying to make horror classy and saleable to a more mainstream audience. And one of the things that happens in the 80s, even though there's still big studio horror movies, is you have some little ones trying to reclaim it just on sheer disgustingness, you know, like respectable people aren't going to go see Evil Dead. And it was more of a hit

with college kids than it was, you know, a hit like, you know, like a Spielberg movie or a Lucas movie at the beginning of the decade. So I love it as this kind of little low budget irritant of a movie. Yeah. Speaking of bio horror, your next couple of picks fit neatly into the continuation of that conversation. What else did you choose? I chose The Thing, the John Carpenter thing, which we haven't really talked a ton about science fiction, at least in our conversation. I mean, Alien, I guess, fits, right? I mean, it's an alien movie, but I love what The Thing was doing by reaching back to the Christian Nyby, Howard Haw Hawks original taking this 1950s mutant carrot film and refitting it for the 80s with mood for a friendly alien that you could sort of

make a doll out of and hug and bring home with you and not this hideous shape-shifting alien that combines what you were talking about with geiger's monster with the paranoia of something like invasion the body snatchers because you're constantly worried in the thing about who is the monster within, like who in this weirdly all-male, Hoxian, interchangeable cast of rugged, parka-wearing guys, who's got the monster inside him? So there's a lot of good human acting. And then when it's time to see the monster, it's one of the least human monsters I've ever seen in a movie. And it's got that great line by David Clennon. The first time he sees it, he goes, you got to be fucking kidding me, which is as good a line in any monster movie as I've ever heard. Because ideally that's what you want to say during a monster movie, right? You want to see something

so gross and scary and weird that you can't fathom that you're looking at it. Critics have written that Carpenter's great skill is when people encounter evil and look at it and just go, Jesus Christ, like in Halloween or the putting on the lenses and they live. And I think the thing is like an A plus example of that. I think you've got to be fucking kidding me is also a good logline for the Reagan era. And you mentioned that insinuating in 1978 that there was a prescience to Romero's vision of the world and ahead of that administration. And I think a lot of these movies that we're talking about here in the 80s clarify a kind of suspicion of the rosiness of the presentation of the American experience in a lot of ways. You know, this idea that everything is, you know, the shining city on a hill and the perfection of modern suburban life. And even though the thing takes place thousands of miles

away in a frozen tundra, it also is a bunch of Americans there to do a job. And they have been deceived in a way, and they have been invaded, and they have been deceived in a way and they have been invaded and they have been, I don't know, ripped apart from the inside by this creature, by this idea in a way. So it's a, it's a perfect choice. It's the only thing that could be more disgusting than the thing though, I think is your next pick. Yeah. Well, my next pick is a little bit of Canadian nationalism and it's also, you know, the only one of the movies that we've mentioned so far with maybe the exception of King Kong, I guess. But I mean, really, it's the only one on this list that makes me cry. And that's The Fly, which is David Cronenberg, our greatest living

English Canadian filmmaker. And, you know, hopefully he'll live forever. Taking this somewhat cheesy, campy 1950s horror movie of the mad scientist sub-genre, fuses himself with a fly and turns into a big fly, and he reroutes it. It's not just about a vain scientist. It's about a kind of likable hipster scientist played by Jeff Goldblum who happens to transform right at the same point that he's falling in love with this journalist covering his experiments. And the tragedy is that he thinks that he's transforming beyond her and he wants her to come with him without realizing that he's turning into this monster. And then the point of view of the film changes. It changes from his exhilaration at the heightened powers that this mutation with a fly has given him to her just watching him fall apart. And Cronenberg said that it was about aging and people read all kinds of cancer and AIDS metaphors into it. I mean, it's one of those great movies where you can project whatever metaphors or allegories you want onto it and it could support

it because it's so simple there's like three people in the movie and it's so disgusting as truly truly just falling apart i mean you see his teeth and ears you know fall off on screen he's actually got his his his his his genitalia is like in a jar you know in his in his apartment and then when it actually comes down to it and turns him from seth brundle into brundle fly and he's more of an insect he's terrifying and disgusting and he really does a number on her ex-boyfriend like john gets is in the all time. I have been fucked up reaction shot hall of fame in the fly when he gets his, his leg and hand burned off. It's unbelievable. So little spoiler there, I guess. It's a great pick. I always saw the movie as a story about the disease

of ambition and the desire to never know when to give up. And you know, Seth Brundle, even though he does at the beginning of the film seem like kind of a sweet guy and obviously a brilliant person. He is monomaniacal and he cannot see the forest for the trees in his life. And even though he has the love of a good woman, so to speak, and a lot of things that are going for him in his life, he can't get past conquering. And that's also a great callback to things like Frankenstein. The Fly is Frankenstein if Dr. Frankenstein and Frankenstein were the same character, which is such a fascinating collision. Oh, totally. Or it's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde if Mr. Hyde was a fly, right? I mean, it's drawing on that deep core stuff. You're exactly right. And then it has this amazingly stringent,

cheap, mid-80s Toronto presentation. And yet, unlike a lot of Canadian horror movies or even Cronenberg's other movies, it transcended that to become a big hit in the States. And we should shout out, of course, who was smart enough to hire Cronenberg to direct that film, which was Mel Brooks. That's right. A lover of monster movies who hired Cronenberg the same way he hired David Lynch for The Elephant Man, which is a different kind of monster movie. So I think one of the takeaways from this podcast is if we're building a wing for this museum, Mel Brooks gets free admission. I will defend Mel Brooks at any cost. Of course. The last movie I've chosen comes about 20 years after The Fly. And it's interesting

to me that we've not chosen anything from the 1990s. We're going into the 2000 and I've chosen The Mist, which is a movie that you and I spoke about on this podcast a few months ago, I believe in the run-up to It Chapter Two, when we talked about Stephen King adaptations. And so I don't need to say too much about it, but the thing that is meaningful to me about it is twofold. One, I like it as a manifestation and a reflection of Ray Harryhausen movies, which I really liked as a kid. And we don't really see that version until we get to the very end and some of the creature effects come into play. But more so, I like it as a modern commentary in the same vein as, say, John Carpenter's The Fog, where the thing that is terrifying you, not unlike John Carpenter's The Thing, is the thing you can't really touch. You

can't really penetrate. You can't really see. It surrounds you, but it's invisible. And maybe there's something inside of it, and maybe there isn't. And the only way to find out is to go out there and go face-to-face with it, which obviously is an idea that is larded with political, emotional, intellectual, romantic meaning about facing your fears and going into the unknown. But it's also just such an incredibly entertaining and energizing adaptation of a story with, as we mentioned last year, just one of the knockdown greatest dark core movie endings of the 21st century. Anything you want to add about The Mist? I would add only that since the only sort of like bad idea associated with Parasite seems to be the black and white version, you know, which sort of is just, you know, here, pay to see this movie again in black and white version. With all respect to Bong Joonon-ho wanting to do that this tends to be a desperate strategy where people are like what if

we re-release this in black and white i think james mankel did that with wolverine too with logan yes logan with logan he's like that's a western so let's put it in black and white the the mist actually did do that i think where frank darabont spoke about the fact i don't know if it was that it was packaged as black and white, or he said, you know, hey, try watching this on your TV with the color settings off. I actually have seen parts of it in black and white, and it's better. What makes it better? I think what makes it better is the callback to, as you say, not that Ray Harryhausen movies were black and white, they tended to be in color but the call back to that that that sense of

possibility you had in 50s in the 1950s where something might actually you might see something new right now right and even though the mon even the monsters in the mist are cgi and when you talk about why we have don't have movies from the 90s or the 2000s i think cgi kind of ruined monster movies with a few good exceptions right there? There are some very fluid, effective exceptions, but it's not a surprise that Blair Witch and Paranormal Activity are the great monster movies of the millennium because they don't show you anything. Because I think because horror movies can now show you anything, it's better for them to show you nothing. That's what activates the imagination. And The Mist does a version of that because I agree with you, the scariest stuff in that movie is when you can't see what's in the mist or you're wondering what's on

the other side of it but what i admire about it and i'm so glad you like that movie because i really like it too when it goes for it and you have to see monsters they are amazing they are like lovecraftian behemoths that you most movies have not put on screen before. I mean, there's one towards the end that might be the biggest monster I've ever seen in a movie, you know, short of stuff like Pacific Rim or whatever. And it is just an awesome sight. So kudos to Frank Darabont. Yeah, he brought some real invention to that one, which is not easy to do 30 years after the Stephen King adaptation train began rolling. You want to talk a couple of honorable mentions?

You've got a few here that I think are clever. Yeah, I mean, one honorable mention, which I won't go on about, but it's really at the epicenter of all this, is Bride of Frankenstein. For having not one, but two memorable monsters and actually not pairing them off in blissful matrimony it's got that great moment where she's like i have to marry this like that's great who can relate um who can relate i love two really funny early 80s movies that show that funny and monstrous are wonderfully wedded together uh larry cohen's cue the winged serpent such a great movie not a metaphorical title yep like it's not about the winged serpent within all of us it's about a giant winged serpent that just lands on the chrysler building and causes shit in new york

and it's so good is it michael moriarty in that movie is he the star michael moriarty and if there was a you know if the oscars mattered he'd have won best actor you know who needs ben kingsley and gandhi when you have michael moriarty he is brilliant in that movie brilliant and then the other funny one which uh i i think he's one of the all-time great monster movie directors even though we didn't mention him is uh is joe dante with the howling absolutely which which gets that great idea of like primal scream therapy and self-help and cultism tied to werewolfism. It's like the 78 Body Snatchers. It's a really good social parody as well as a great werewolf movie. I prefer it to American Werewolf in London, though that's obviously pretty neck and neck.

It's a good call. I thought about putting Gremlins on the list as a sort of similar suburban nightmare and the fetish objects of suburban life and what we can buy in stores and what it means when something is truly exotic and how it can torture us. Dante has a bunch of examples of great movies like this. Well, Dante, I mean, in Gremlins,

you have him pushing, the Gremlin pushes the E.T. doll off the shelf. That's right, yes. And then in Gremlins 2, which is this great parody of sequels, it's like, here's more of them, right? Like, the more the sequel, the sequelness of it becomes the target of satire. Like, even Small Soldiers is a good monster movie in that the monsters are sympathetic. Those little action figures voiced by the Spinal Tap guys who are programmed to lose

to the American soldiers. Yes, yes. Which is hilarious. One day we'll have to do a Joe Dante celebration episode. He really is becoming one of the most underrated figures of the 80s and 90s.

I wanted to give a quick shout out to the original Wolfman. You mentioned the howling, obviously, which 40 years later could become this template for that kind of occultism slash self-help guruism that infected the post hippie society in america but the original wolf man is also just this great delivery system for the anxiety of masculinity and rage and violence and addiction and what happens to men when they go out into the night.

And it may feel a little bit simplistic now in this much more sophisticated society in which we live. But in 1941, it really was this really interesting evocation. And it features, you know, extraordinary performance by Lon Chaney. And I think much like all of the great universal classic monster movies, you mentioned this about the creature from the black lagoon. It's sub 80 minutes. So all of those movies are so you could literally just power through all five or six of the original classics in under seven hours, which is a pretty fun thing to do.

Um, I was just going to say, I, the last, I just want to mention one more cause I'll, I'll, I'll kick myself if I don't, which is just Larry Fessenden's Wendigo, which is a really earnest little film with Patricia Clarkson and Jake Weber about a

family going up to a cabin in upstate New York. And there's a Native American deer spirit invoked and invited, and it's got really terrible special effects, which is the best thing about it. And maybe I'll be enigmatic by leaving it at that. I have never seen this movie, so I'll have to add it to my list and check it out. I hope you like it. I do. Adam, I enjoyed this conversation. Thank you for bringing your expertise and wit to the Monster Movie Hall of Fame. Thank you so much for having me. It's always fun. Thanks, Adam. Thanks to Adam Naiman. And now let's go right to my conversation with The Invisible Man writer-director, Lee Winnell. Delighted to be joined by Lee Winnell.

Lee, thanks for being here. Thank you for having me. Lee, I don't want to ask you all the same boring questions about how this project came to be, but I'm going to do my best to help people understand why you made a movie of The Invisible Man. When did you first see or become aware of the character, The Invisible Man? In my life? In your life.

In my life, I actually think I became aware of this character. I remember pretending to be sick one day. I can say this now. I don't know if my parents listen to this podcast, so maybe I'm safe. I hope they do. It was all a lie, Mom and Dad. It was a lie that day.

I think I was in about third grade, pretended to be sick, got to stay home from school. And there was a movie on TV, Mad Monster Party, which was a stop motion animation made by the same guys who made Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Oh, sure. Is it Rankin-Baskin? Yeah, Rankin-Baskin. I think it's the company. Yeah. And so they made this film. I think you can find it on DVD somewhere, but it's all about the classic monsters, your Dracula and your Wolfman, the Mummy, the Invisible Man, all getting together for a party. The title is not misleading. And I remember being obsessed with that movie from that day of fraudulent sickness. I was obsessed and I used to go through these phases when I was a kid. I would have obsessions. My dad still talks about it. He's like, oh, your obsessions. I would go through like a six month obsession with Sherlock Holmes and then that would end and I would forget about

Sherlock Holmes and move on to the next obsession, which would be King Kong, whatever it was. And I went through a monster phase after that. I remember being really into Dracula. So I'm guessing that's when this character first came on my radar as a kid. And then now, all these years later, it's part of pop culture. These iconic monsters, they use their faces to sell soda. You know, like, they're such a part of popular culture. Invisible Man is different, though. I think that this character is a little bit weirder, a little bit more misanthropic, a little bit more villainous in an odd way. There's something kind of sweet about Frankenstein. There's something kind of sweet about Frankenstein.

There's something kind of sexy about Dracula. Yeah, you're right. There's something romantic about it. There's something tortured about the Wolfman. You know, this character is pretty devious. And what you've chosen to do with it, I think, is so interesting. I hope you could maybe help me understand how you saw the character over time and if that influenced what kind of a movie you wanted to make. Yeah. I mean, I, I, I was, I was aware and I totally agree with you that, that, um, a lot of these monsters, they're safe

now. You know, you know, my daughter watches animated movies with Dracula and the Wolfman all hanging out together, you know, and Adam Sandler does the voice and it's like, where is my blood? And it's just like that, that is what we think of when we think of Dracula. We think of the cape and we think of Adam Sandler. When the idea of making The Invisible Man was floated to me in a meeting, it wasn't something I was thinking about. It was brought up. I hadn't given a second's thought to my version of an Invisible Man movie

in my life until it was put in front of me. But that instant, that instant that it was suggested, I said, well, you know, if I made this movie, I would make it from the point of view of the victim. That was just me kind of spitballing and it led to the movie that we have now. That was really my take. I wanted to make this character scary again. You know, if these characters are safe now, if they're starring in animated movies, how do you take them back to that original form that they were in? You know, when the original Invisible Man novel was released a hundred years ago, it was supposed to be terrifying. It was supposed to

be scary. And the thing that's different about the invisible man further to what you pointed out is that Dracula, Frankenstein, the wolf man, they're all real monsters. They're supernatural. The invisible man's just a guy. It's just a human being who has this power to turn himself invisible. So it deals a lot more with the sort of sociopathy of human beings, much more so than you can pin otherworldliness on Dracula. Well, he's not one of us. He's a vampire and there's this whole vampire law that goes with him. The Invisible Man is just a guy and I love that. What it presented to me was an opportunity to just tell a story about a psychopath. And what happens if you give

a psychopath the power of invisibility? So I want to talk more about how you chose to make the movie. But before that, almost everything that you've worked on, I think, is essentially original. Everything you've written and everything, you've never really kind of gone into the IP domain. We know now, obviously, it's hard to get original films made. You've had a lot of success being a part of original films that became franchises, but weren't when you started in most cases. Were you resistant to the idea of doing something that had kind of a recognizable brand name in any way before you decided to do this? I wouldn't say I was resistant to it, but I like to write my own stuff.

Like as a director, even just as a creator, I like to create a world from scratch. It's never seemed that interesting to me to take someone else's work and figure out a way to translate it to the screen. I know a lot of people do it well, and a lot of my favorite movies are based on books or graphic novels, someone else's IP. So it's nothing I have against it. I don't think it's cheap to adapt someone else's work. But for me personally, what gets me out of bed in the morning is that world that you're not privy to yet. If you think about an original blockbuster movie, which as you pointed out is rare on the ground these days. A recent-ish example I can think of is The Matrix. Now there's a film that operates on the level of a comic book blockbuster, but it's completely original. Like the Wachowskis, they invented

this world, they put it out and they were lucky that people connected with it. That to me is so exciting. Like if you said to me, I'll give you a hundred million dollars, you know, you can make whatever film you want. You're allowed to spend that money how you want. I would want to do the Matrix. I wouldn't want to go off and do my version of Spider-Man, even though I love Spider-Man as a character. It's just not, it's just not what sort of gets my creative engine going, you know? Did you agree to do The Invisible Man after Upgrade was all completed? Yes. It was actually very soon after the film was finished. I finished the sound mix, dusted my hands. I'm like, now it's time to go sit on a beach somewhere. That's exactly when

they called me in for that meeting. And I was writing another movie very quickly. I've never done that before where you go from one project to the next so quickly. Why did you do it? Was there a part of you that wanted to do another original story that was thinking about something else? Or were you like, I have a clean slate? I was thinking I was going to go off, you know, decompress from making Upgrade, take a break, and then think up some other original film. You know, and Upgrade, I really got bitten by the sci-fi bug on that movie.

I love Upgrade. Oh, thank you so much. I mean, I, you know, we were trying to tell a big story on a big canvas, but at a budget level that doesn't necessarily give you the tools to do so. So I thought we did a pretty good job of pulling it off. But as soon as I finished that film, I was like, okay, can I make the $50 million version of Upgrade? Can I do the Chris Nolan version of this film? So that's where my mind was at. And then I went to this meeting and this character of the Invisible Man

was presented to me. And in the ensuing days after that meeting, I couldn't stop thinking about it. All I could think of when I was lying in bed at night was ways to modernize this character. Some films, they kind of choose you, like you have to make them to get them out of your system because this is taking up too much space in your head.

And it's usually a good sign if you can't stop thinking about something, that's a reason to do it. Because as you know, films are very hard. They take a long time. So you better love it. And I loved this. The film that you saw

is pretty much the film that was bouncing around in my head. That's interesting. That's very rare. Yeah. For me too, you know, I've been involved with movies that just changed hugely.

Like the first draft looks nothing like the finished film what accounted for that why was that why were you able to do that it was a very simple idea like this the the simplicity and the sort of streamlined nature of the story kept it from veering off wildly um you know i i was using films like Misery as a template. You know, I'm a big fan of that movie. And, you know, Hollywood used to have this type of film they would make in the sort of late 80s, early 90s, that they don't make as much anymore, these adult thrillers, you know, films like Misery, Fatal Attraction, and they were blockbuster movies starring big movie stars, but they were very much made for adults and they were intense. And now I think, you know,

I feel like Misery, if it was made today based on that same book, it's a Netflix movie. But back then it was very much a blockbuster multiplex movie. And I miss that. And Misery also from the perspective of the victim in many ways. Yes, exactly. And also a chamber piece. I mean, misery is a play. It's two people in a room. In fact, have they done a misery play? They did do a play, yes. William Goldman adapted his screenplay for Broadway,

but it was famously not as successful. Oh, okay. Okay. I think Bruce Willis was in the James Connell. It is a perfect play. Although suspense, I admire anyone who tries suspense on stage. It's hard. I mean, editing is the key component of suspense.

So how the hell, have you ever seen something that was trying to get you on the edge of your seat in the theater? You know, my mom used to talk about Wait Till Dark as a key, because that was also a stage play. It's funny you bring that up. That was one of the films I watched when I was preparing to write this. Oh, really? Yeah, I watched Wait Until Dark and I watched Cat People, that Jacques Tournier film, which uses a lot of like nothing's there, but you hear it.

Yes, you never see it. Yeah, which was a huge inspiration for me. But I saw a play in London, The Woman in Black. It was like a horror movie on stage. That was a really interesting experience because not only were they trying to scare you, but they were actually doing jump scares. They had this great moment in the play where the whole stage went pitch black. There was nothing, all the house lights. It was in total darkness except for the lead character on stage had a flashlight.

And he moved around and suddenly the ghost was right there. And I was like, wow, that's interesting. That's like a jump scare on stage. And the music went, ka-ching. It was like a sting. It was like a classic Blumhouse sting. But that was years ago that I saw that and it was inspiring. But yeah, to go back to Misery, I was like this sort of quality,

this story that you can hold in your hand, you know, a lot of blockbusters these days, they're getting really unwieldy. You know, they're three hours long. And we're talking about movies about kids' characters, comic books, but they're three hours long and there's 48 plot lines that you have to follow and you're like, what's it now? And now he's got the, like, I think what kept this movie, you know,

from the first draft to the shooting draft with the same spine, the same structure was that simplicity that I never was like, well, let's try a draft where it's set in Dubai just because, you know, that option wasn't available. Well, I mean, it's so much more effective in that way. But is that common for you to go back and look at movies that have the tone and the approach and the style that you're looking to capture what are were there others that you looked at before this um and when does it start is it before you start writing is it before you start

shooting how does it it's before i start writing it's actually my favorite period of writing is when you're not writing i try to pull prolong the not writing for as long as possible. Yes. Yeah. It's paid procrastination basically. Um, and, and by the way, I can stretch out that, uh, research period for two, three months before I actually start typing keys. Um, and I, and I love it. Um, and, and usually what I do is I'll make a soundtrack, like I'll, I'll make a playlist of, um, different of different pieces of music from different films that I think are in a similar vein. For Upgrade, I had a lot of like Trent

Reznor and Atticus Ross and all this stuff. And so for this film, I had this really classic kind of Bernard Herrmann playlist of music and I'll go for long walks. I live right near Griffith Park, so I'll always go for these long walks playing this music over and over and kind of sinking into the world of the film. And part of that process is watching movies. You know, it's basically an excuse to watch movies. And for this film, I watched Wait Until Dark. I watched Cat People.

I watched Misery, Gone Girl, Dead Calm. Some of those thrillers that are really about two or three people working against each other. And everything is psychological. Everything's about that game of chess. Like if you watch a film like Dead Calm, Nicole Kidman gains the upper hand, then Billy Zane gains the upper hand and they don't have anywhere to go. They're on a boat. And so I just wanted to live in that world. And so I'll just watch this stuff and you learn so much. I had a little mini Hitchcock film festival. I was watching Hitchcock films and there's some moments towards the end of this movie where I'm really

paying homage and Lizzie looks like the sort of Hitchcock blonde and it's all there. It all goes into this blender and you hopefully to use a terrible analogy you kind of make a smoothie that is doesn't rip those other movies off but sort of has the dna of those movies in them but is is a product of all these different you know your own life a photograph you have a piece of music all these different disparate things go into the blender i think uh the other thing tonally that is interesting to me about this version of the movie is it is really in concert with Upgrade because it feels like you've Trojan-horsed an action thriller into a horror machine.

And it's so effective. And the movie is tense and scary. And you do get your signature Blumhouse scare stings which are great but like is that something that you have to communicate early on to say like the style of this film and the way that I'm going to tell the story and there's going to be a big action set piece right here in act two or whatever like is that all that stuff have to come at the earliest stages of conception and explanation for your vision for it if you if you're talking about selling someone else on it like here's what I'm'm going to do, it's not a conversation that really happens with Blumhouse. And the reason is they're

low budgets. The higher the budget, the more information people want. They're so trepidatious about spending that much money and they micromanage you. And I have many close friends who've made blockbuster movies and I hear the war stories from them about the studio and the different demands. And I hear this word a lot, political. You've got to be political. It sounds terrible to me. What's great about Blumhouse is they kind of let you go off into your corner, vomit up whatever you're going to do. And then they perform an autopsy later. And if they like it, they're very hands off. The only time you'll hear from them is if they're really bumping on something. So this sort of thing that you've noticed in Upgrade that puts it in concert with

the Invisible Man, I think that's a natural rhythm. Like as a moviegoer i just love horror i love i also love action stuff and you sort of put it all together without even knowing you're doing it you know it sort of just comes out that way like when i was making upgrade the movies that were inspiring me were like these um practical effects driven 80s vhs era sci-fi movies like Robocop, Total Recall, The Thing, Scanners. Carpenter, Cameron, Verhoeven. Yes, exactly. The Holy Trinity, right? And, you know, I have- That's why I love that movie. I have so much nostalgia for those films. They're great movies, yes, but I think at least a part of the reason I love them is that it's the same reason you love, you know, that roast dinner that your mom used to make you. It makes me feel comfortable.

To this day, if I ever get the flu or something and I'm sick in bed, I'm going straight for like Big Trouble in Little China, Robo. It's the cinematic version of Chicken Soup. Yes. It's comfort. And so, you know, you go back to that era and it's just what I like. I keep going back to that well of the movies I loved when I was in my adolescence, when I was a teenager. And there's a purity because when I loved those movies, I didn't know how you made movies. There's none of the cynicism there that you can sometimes get

when you peek behind the Iron Curtain. So I go back to that well of purity, and I definitely keep doing that on any script that I do. I think if someone gave me $100 million, it would probably be a film that you would feel was in sync with these other movies you'd be like okay there's a bit of horror there's a bit of action but it's it's all this stuff you know the other thing that's that's different that feels like maybe it's a step forward maybe you don't see

it that way is tonally upgrades very funny and and very wry and it's kind of a thrill ride right this movie is very serious it's about a very serious idea. It's complex. It's a tricky story for someone like you to tell as well. Why did you want this to be more a story about survivors and the fear of abusers and all of this complex stuff that comes with Elizabeth Moss's character? Yeah. Well, it's really a case of the film telling you what it wants to be. I think the reason Upgrade was kind of funny and wry is that as I was writing it, I was sort of swimming in the weirdness of what it would be like to have a voice talking in your head.

And I started thinking that it would be funny if they were just arguing all the time. They're like the world's first online married couple. I was just imagining this Luddite who was like, stop telling me what to do. And it sort of wants to be that. I think maybe the first draft of Upgrade, I was thinking, it'll be very serious and this will be like Inception. And then as you're writing it, it sort of moves away from you.

It's like, no, no, no, I'm different. I'm funnier. And in that way, people have said to me, I reminded me of like, you know, They Live or one of these sort of funny sci-fi movies from the 80s. And I'm more than cool with that. With this movie, you could tell it didn't want to be funny. You know, the issue of a woman escaping domestic abuse and being gaslit and stalked. There's not one-liners that fit there. It just didn't.

You can't shoehorn an attitude into a movie. I think you have to read the room on a movie and go, okay, this is this. And maybe there's some of the same influences there, like you said, with Upgrade and Invisible Man. There's some similarities. But tonally, you have to let the movie dictate that. Otherwise, it's going to seem like it's this forced marriage that it's just like, what? Why is he trying to make this funny? It's not funny. I do. How did Elizabeth Moss get involved in this? Because the movie really is kind of riding on her shoulders.

It's like a one-woman show, right? And we have this amazing supporting cast, but she is front and center. She really became involved just through an offer. When I write a script, I'm not picturing actors. I wish I could do that. I remember reading an interview years ago with the guy who wrote Crazy Heart, is it? The Jeff Bridges. Scott Cooper. Scott Cooper. And I was reading this interview with him and he said that I always pictured Jeff Bridges from the very start. And I was like, God, what a cool experience it must be to write a movie thinking of Jeff Bridges and then get Jeff Bridges. I was so envious of that. But for the time being, what I do when I write a film is picture my friends and family. For me, it's a

shortcut to knowing what that person would say. That's sort of horrifying in this context. In this context, it's horrifying. I place these people and I give them a different name. And sometimes I'll even write the first draft of the script is just the name of the person I know, and I only change it at the end. And it's just a good way for me to feel very personal and intimate with this character that is essentially created out of thin air it's not until i finish the script that i have to scrap all those thoughts of people i know and start thinking about actors and that was the same for this i get to the end and i'm like okay and i make a list and i'm like wow the whole movie rests on this one person and they're going off the cliff of sanity. And, you know, as you know, in movies, it's tricky.

You can overdo it. Yes. It's easy for an actor playing someone who's insane to fall into histrionics. And all of a sudden it's mummy dearest, right? Yes. And so the list of people who can authentically pull that off is pretty short. And Elizabeth Moss is on it. We've seen what she can do.

She tends to do these roles where for some reason her character is not being allowed to say what they want to say. There's a through line there from Mad Men to Handmaid's Tale of the words meaning nothing. It's what's in the eyes. There's an internal dialogue that's happening. And you look at Elizabeth Moss, you can tell what she's thinking. It's like dialogue. And I mean, who can do that? And so as soon as the idea was suggested to me, you know, Elizabeth Moss, I was so excited. Like I wanted to see that movie.

I wanted to see the Elizabeth Moss version of The Invisible Man. It's really interesting you put it that way because I probably have some questions for her about how she keeps choosing these characters who are so tormented and so unable or unwilling to communicate their torment. Even she admits it. She'll say to you on set like she'll look up at me

I'll call cut. She'll look up, face streaked with tears, covered in blood hair askew and just be like, why? Why do I do it? And you know what's hilarious is she's funny. She's really funny, and she's very, very quick-witted. And I would say to her, like, when are you going to get onto your agent and say, get me a comedy?

Yeah, where's the rom-com? But I think she actually, without speaking for her, you know, my theory is that she would maybe find it a little boring. I think she loves the pit of hell. It's a big challenge. Yeah, she loves diving off that cliff. That's a happy place. So speaking of that and speaking of potentially overdoing it,

one of the things that I think is really effective about the movie is it does not overdo the invisible man nature of the story. There's a way to make this movie where it's just like all the time there's just like pots and pans flying all over the house and it becomes this orgy of invisibility and you're much more sparing with it and precise and the sort of sequences that you arrange around it are very clever and feel very, um i don't know visually and tonally focused was it hard to actually do that part of the story to sort of execute the there's a sequence in the kitchen that is very still for example but very effective there's also another

sequence that is one of the big scares of the moment that is way more antic and the camera is moving and we're moving perspectives quickly you You know, are you designing all of that stuff well ahead of time? And how, how is it more difficult to achieve than you might've imagined with, I assume there's a man in a green suit doing that stuff, but walk us through that a little bit. Yeah. I mean, well, thank you for the compliment. I mean, um, I wanted to be sparing with the invisibility because I thought very early on before I even started writing the screenplay, one of the thoughts I had

is the best weapon I have in this movie is the audience's imagination. Like audiences today have seen so many movies, they're so cinema literate that I can weaponize that literacy against them because they know, even on a subconscious level, they know that if the camera moves away from the actors and looks down an empty hallway, well, it's not going to do that unless there's a purpose. And if you've just bought a ticket to a film called The Invisible Man, you're going to be suspicious of any empty corridor I show you. So I decided to use that knowledge of films against the audience. And my goal was, can I make empty spaces tense? You know, I didn't want to have pots and pans flying around. I didn't want to have

the floating sunglasses and the pipe and the bathrobe. You know, to me, that's a movie called The Visible Man. I wanted to exploit this power for what it truly does, you know, which is provide stealth. And if I had the power to be invisible, I'm not going to go and put a hat on and have everyone know exactly where I am. I'm going to exploit it. And that's what made it interesting for me was the idea of empty spaces being threatening. And so sometimes we would do that very still moment you talked about in the kitchen where the camera is just locked off. The reason I did that is because I wanted the audience searching the whole frame. You've got this big wide screen. I wanted them to be afraid that

they would miss something. And you're teasing them. I mean, the tease is the fun in a horror film. A good jump scare, sure, it's fun. But real fun is in the torturing, the taking people up to the line and then walking them back and then taking people up to the line and then walking them back and then taking them up to the line again and walking them back. And so that moment, and then the more visceral moments like the one you mentioned, yeah, it was a really technical process. Many meetings, many migraines. We sat around, we discussed how we're going to do this.

We had the stunt performer in the green bodysuit, found out that it's very difficult to remove someone from a frame. Easy to add things. Not easy, but if you have an actor struggling on the ground with the air, it's actually easier to add in a werewolf later than it is to subtract a stunt performer in a green suit because, I mean, the amount of headaches. We found out that the performer was covering too much with his hands and covering Lizzie's face at one stage. So what do we do there? And it was so trial by fire and trial and error.

Eventually, the technique we ended up using for invisibility was many techniques we would do everything from cgi to like old school practical like props guy hidden in the cabinet pulling a door closed with a piece of string which which would have been used on the set of the original invisible man that's we we were using effects from the 1930s because who cares, right? Like as long as, as long as the audience is tense, who, I don't care how we get there. Let's just get there. You know? I think it's amazingly effective.

And I appreciate that through the first, and I don't think I'm spoiling anything by saying this for people who are going to see it. Through the first 45 or 50 minutes of the movie, you don't really know what kind of movie you're watching. You just don't, it's just not, we don't really know what kind of movie you're watching. You just don't. It's just not. We don't start with, as you said, supernatural. We don't start with clarity.

And you really keep people on the edge of their seat, literally, by trying to figure out what's going on. Oh, that's great. Can you help me understand just one other technical thing? Yeah. I noticed it in Upgrade and it's the same here. And I don't really understand motion control and how the camera moves so quickly and

how you're stitching together certain shots. But it creates this kind of like basically like a new version of an action sequence that is very exciting to watch. And I think you've kind of hit on something that is yours and very cool. Can you help us understand that a little bit? Yeah.

So on Upgrade, what we were doing felt very scrappy. Like we were like very cool. Can you help us understand that a little bit? Yeah. Um, so on upgrade, what we were doing felt very scrappy. Like we were like the kids having a party while the parents are in Hawaii. You know, that, that whole film felt like we got away with something. We went down to Australia. Um, we had no money, but we were making it work. And this, you know, do or die Australian crew was like, yeah, I'll do this. I'll do that. And, and, um, that's one of the great things about working in Australia is this like, um, you know, attitude of like, you know, I dare you to jump off that bridge. Yeah. Okay. I'll do it. Like, there's no, maybe, you know, I'll get hurt. It's like, I'll do it. And, you know, that's the attitude on a film set. It's like, so I want to design a fight scene that

looks like a robot is fighting. And the way we did it there was very low key and scrappy is we just strapped an iPhone to the actor, Logan Marshall Green, and the camera locks to the phone. So wherever Logan goes, the camera moves with him and it gives it that dizzying feeling of the world is off its axis and the center of gravity is now this human being. But people really responded to it. So it kind of emboldened me to go further in this movie. And the filmmakers I love best, they have a trademark. When you watch a Scorsese movie or a Tim Burton movie, there are certain filmmakers you recognize their stamp. And I love that. And so I think it's kind of cool that you recognize their stamp, and I love that.

And so I think it's kind of cool that you're saying like, oh, I recognize this thing as being something you do. With Invisible Man, we sort of did the more upmarket, uptown version of the iPhone. So this time we used a motion control rig, which is a robot, and it just allows the camera to be very precise. It allows it to do strange moves that human beings couldn't do. Like the camera can actually flip to a total, you know, angle.

And now it's sort of pivoting down the hallway. And it can sort of do the robotic version of what we did in Upgrade. So it was two different approaches, but the feel hopefully is the same. It's the idea of how do you make an action scene feel different? Well, make the center of gravity different so that when someone falls to the ground, instead of just watching them fall, you go with them and you see what they would see. If we're lying on the floor, if we're upside down on a couch, the ceiling looks like the floor. So I want to give the audience that feeling with the camera.

And so, you know, hopefully I can do it more. I'd love to do like a full-on Jason Bourne fight sequence using this technique. Yes, I was thinking of Mad Max. Mad Max, yeah, exactly. Like just lock it in because I love it. And if that's my trademark, that's it. Great, I'm so happy.

Well, it's just, you know. Actually, the stunt team would call those shots Whannells on Invisible Man because the same stunt team who did Upgrade did this and they would be like, all right, we got a Whannell coming up, which is whenever the camera would lock to the actors and kind of flip around.

I might be overstating it, but I just feel like this is a new cinematic language. It's just like a new thing. I've broken the mold. I've broken the mold, ladies and gentlemen. I mean, it's a credit to you that you have a signature. That's very cool. Yeah, yeah.

That's all I've ever wanted. I'm telling you. I'm telling you, that is it. If I could have that on my tombstone, I'm so happy. Like, had a signature. Had a thing, you know? All right, only a couple more

because I know you got to go. You think you're going to keep doing these like monster movies are you gonna be a part of this is there gonna be a universe all that stuff I don't know never say never

who knows someone could come to me with a a pitch for the wolfman and I'll be like oh great but I really treated this film like a standalone

like I almost deliberately ignored those other characters because I think to make this film effectively I had to make this film effectively, I had to pretend like this was the first time this story had ever been told. As opposed to, there's a version of this movie that could have been very reverent of the original

text and set in the 1800s with the fog machines. And I probably would have loved to see that movie, but I don't know if I would have liked to make that movie. The movie I enjoyed making was the Gone Girl version, the very clinical, David Fincher-esque, grounded, realistic, stark version. And so I haven't even given a second's thought to these other characters. My thought right now is like, I'm obsessed with bringing back original content, like we touched on before. We talked about The Matrix. That would be my ultimate goal is, can you do The Matrix? And I mean, we could probably talk about this for an hour, just this topic of like, what's happening with films and what's getting into theaters. And we've had a strange year because Parasite and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and these original movies have

actually done well. And so I'm wondering, has that changed the conversation? Are we suddenly allowed to make these films again and get them into theaters? Theaters are going through a strange time. It's way above my pay grade to think about what's going to save movie theaters. But hopefully we aren't, but if we are in the death rattle of movie theaters, I want to get in there with a big, original, fun movie because that's what Star Wars was. Absolutely. Star Wars wasn't based on a book or a comic or another movie. It blasted you in the face with originality.

I completely agree. I assume you think that the success or whatever happens with this film will help dictate some of that. Yeah, I mean, that's the Hollywood economy, isn't it? Like, hey, how'd your last film do? And that'll tell us how your next film will go. Even though that's

rarely the case. Yeah, exactly. I'll cash in any chips I have off the back of this to make something but if you ask me what makes me excited

when I go down to my office at home you know, I have this office I bought a new house last year and I finally got this home office I've always wanted. I always used to have to go somewhere else to write. And now I'm writing at home and I've got this shelf in my office and it's covered with all this nostalgia. I've got Jack Burton from Big Trouble in Little China. I've got these

Masters of the Universe toys that I collected. My wife gave me a very hard-to-find figurine of Jack Nicholson from The Shining with wearing the jacket, holding the axe. And when I go down to my office, I'll spin the chair around and I'll be staring at the shelf and I'm looking at all these little reminders and totems of this stuff I grew up with. And it's like this bullet train to excitement because those movies, they spark this thing. And, you know, I want to do that for someone else. I want to be someone else's carpenter where, you know, they get the flu, they watch Upgrade.

They watch The Invisible Man. They watch that movie. I've got to do that for someone else. Lee, we end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing they've seen? You've been watching many movies? I have. I'm just trying to think.

I watched Judy last night. I liked it. I don't know if I'd call it the last great thing I saw. Obviously, Renee Zellweger was great. She won the Oscar. The last great thing I saw. You know, I loved Knives Out. I really had fun.

Again, it's that original movie thing. It was the last time I was in the movies with that giddy feeling of like, you know, when the lights go down and the logos come up. And before the logos even finished, you're like giddy with excitement. It doesn't happen. Sometimes I feel like I'm going to see a movie as like part of my civic duty, like a new Avengers movie. Better go.

Yep. Knives Out gave me that feeling. You know, the same feeling I had when I saw Ghostbusters. I still remember. I even remember the theater. Waverly Gardens Twin Cinemas. My mom took my brother and I there. We sat down and that Columbia logo comes up and that like,

and I was just like, my whole body was like on fire with excitement. Like, I felt that with Knives Out, so I'll give it up to Knives Out. That's perfect. I love The Invisible Man. Thank you so much

for doing this. Thanks for having me. Thank you to Adam Neyman and thank you to Lee Winnell. Please tune in to The Big Picture next week. We're going to be turning our attention to two big-time white guy movie stars of the 90s, 2000s, and 2010s.

Ben Affleck, who's got The Way Back coming out soon, and Mark Wahlberg, who has a movie on Netflix called Spencer Confidential. See you then.