The Big Picture - The Most Awesome Movie of 2022, and 10 More to Stream Right Now. Plus, David Cronenberg!

Episode Date: June 3, 2022

It’s a recommendations episode! Sean breaks down 10 intriguing new movies that you can watch right now on a variety of streaming services (1:00). Then, he’s joined by David Cronenberg to discuss the legendary director’s new film, ‘Crimes of the Future,’ starring Viggo Mortensen and Kristen Stewart (42:00). Host: Sean Fennessey Guest: David Cronenberg Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Sean Fennessey. We've got something special cooking on the Prestige TV podcast. I'll be recapping one of my favorite shows, HBO's Barry, every Sunday night with the writer-director star of the show, the great Bill Hader. We'll talk about the show's wild twists and turns, its special brand of dark comedy, and how it all came together. So on Sunday nights, immediately after a new episode airs, you can hear Bill and I break it all down on the Prestige TV pod. Subscribe on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Sean Fennessey, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about new movies. It's a recommendations episode.

I'm going to break down 10 intriguing new movies that you can watch right now on a variety of streaming services. Then after that, I am so excited to share a conversation I had with David Cronenberg, one of my favorite filmmakers of all time, the director of a new movie that is out today in limited release called Crimes of the Future. It stars Viggo Mortensen, Lea Seydoux, and Kristen Stewart. Maybe we'll discuss the movie some more as it expands from the limited release, but my conversation with Cronenberg is largely spoiler-free, and honestly who could spoiler a Cronenberg movie? They are unspoilable and bizarre and wonderful and fascinating and funny and scary and certainly rife with body horror. It takes place in what feels like the not-so-

distant future where the human body has evolved to develop new internal organs. What those who have these new body parts do with them is really the subject of this story. Are they physical maladies? Are they a new form of human art? Are they the subject of a predatory governmental conspiracy? Possibly all three. I hope you'll stick around for my chat with David. He is a true master of filmmaking. What else is out there, though, in the world of movies right now? It's not a ton of new films in theaters because Top Gun Maverick, I just read today, is expanding into 16 more theaters. I think it's in 4,800 screens this weekend. Wags,

I know you're going to see it again on one of these screens. It's actually being projected out into the sky as I look out my window right now, and every person in the entire borough of Brooklyn is watching it simultaneously. It's a fifth-generation theatrical experience here with Top Gun Maverick. So we're not going to talk about Top Gun Maverick anymore. We did three episodes in a row about Tom Cruise and Top Gun Maverick. So I feel like I need to spread the wealth a little bit. The first movie I'm going to talk about is amongst a certain kind of movie fan becoming a huge phenomenon. About two months ago when this movie opened in the United States, I started getting messages on social media from people

begging me to talk about this movie, and I hadn't yet seen it. I only just saw it yesterday for the first time on a big screen. Fortunately, it's also streaming on Netflix. The movie I'm talking about is RRR, which stands for Rise, Roar, Revolt, among other things. It's written and directed by S.S. Rajmouli. This is our first Tollywood recommendation. Not a Bollywood film, a Tollywood film. It's a Telugu film. It's a different part of India entirely, but it shares some of the hallmarks of a traditional Bollywood film. Let me just say, this movie is wild, crazy, bonkers. It is a mega event of a movie. Its running time is three hours and five minutes.

It is a historical fantasy epic that is also a musical, that is also a buddy comedy, that is absolutely a crazy action movie. It's kind of like if Michael Bay was empowered to make a Lawrence of Arabia style epic. So fun, so silly, so over-the-top. Very heartfelt, though.

Very exciting. It stars N.T. Ramarau Jr. and Ram Charan, two huge stars in Tollywood and in India. And I guess I'll describe this. Have you heard of this movie, Bobby? You have awareness of RRR? No. Okay.

It played one night only last night in Los Angeles and New York and a handful of other places and it is now fully available on Netflix for anybody to watch. I think it has been on Netflix for a week or so. But it's this epic story

of two Indian revolutionaries, Raju and Bhima. And it's all about their fight against the British Raj in 1920 thereabouts. And the plot explores this undocumented period in their lives when they both chose to go into a kind of obscurity oblivion before they began to fight for their country.

And it imagines them having this deep and abiding frenemyship in which they work together to overthrow British rule. And that sounds a little bit stuffy, I think, but this is a movie in which like, you know, tigers are unleashed to eat the British rule and like all form of animal is weaponized and there's flaming bows and arrows and there's massive TNT room explosions and all kinds of super fights and swinging saves from a burning bridge after a train has crashed into the ocean. It's just that it's a thrill ride.

It's a classic thrill ride kind of a movie. And it's also, I think, an opportunity to get exposed to a different kind of movie. You know, you and I were talking a couple weeks ago, Bobby, when we did a mailbag.

Somebody asked a question about Bollywood movies and looking for some recommendations about Bollywood. I am by no means a Bollywood expert. I'm not the right person to ask about what are the best Bollywood movies and looking for some recommendations about Bollywood. I am by no means a Bollywood expert. I'm not the right person to ask about what are the best Bollywood films of all time. Likewise for Tollywood.

You know, SS Rajmouli is a very acclaimed and celebrated and financially successful filmmaker in this world. His last couple of movies have been very big box office hits as well and have done pretty good business in the United States and the UK as well. I don't have a ton of insight

into the shape of his career and where he's taking things, but there's kind of no denying this movie. It's like, it's all the funniest and best bits from superhero movies and none of the kind of weird intergalactic mumbo jumbo. It's weirdly grounded for a movie

that features tiger fights. So I just just i have to recommend this i think people should check it out it is like i said 185 minutes so that it requires a true commitment to it but um it's worth it in my opinion you're gonna watch this one well sometimes when i hear the runtime of like 185 minutes i'm like wow it's gonna it's gonna really knock out my whole night and then i think back on the fact that i've watched every single mets baseball game of this entire year and they're all 185 minutes.

And I think maybe that's not as big of a commitment as the number and the runtime would suggest. You know, the other way to think about it too is if you're going to watch it from your home, and of course that's okay. You don't have to go to a movie theater to see this movie. Think about like, okay, you get in your car, you drive to the movie theater, you sit down at your AMC, you got 25 minutes of commercials and trailers, and then you got to wait for the movie to end, and then you got to get in your car and drive home. And then that was three, three and a half hours. If you saw Maverick, that was a three-hour commitment anyway. So it's not really

that significantly different. Plus, like I said, you've got fucking exploding TNT rooms, and you've got these bridge-saving moments. And anyway anyway it's a really really fun movie I highly recommend people check it out it is really one of the box office global sensations of the year so far too it had been the highest grossing Indian film in history up until like a few weeks ago when

another film came along called KGF chapter 2 that overtook it this would be like if if Avatar was released like two months after the Terminatorook it. This would be like if if Avatar was released like two months after the Terminator 2. You know you'd be like the fuck like how did

these two you know epochal films anyway. Maybe there's everybody's trying to get back to the theater. Trying to get back to the lived experience. It feels like shattering

records no matter what gets put into the theater. I will say this is actually what one of the things that is good about Netflix too, is having a streaming service and a global studio brand that cares about the whole world and has audience in the whole world means that they're more willing to license and promote movies like this.

Because a movie like RRR 25 years ago would have been much harder to see in the United States. And you probably would have had to live in a city where it would have opened or would have lived in a community that had a big Indian population. And this is a, you know, it's a way to create exposure for different film cultures. And so I'm grateful for that. Now that Netflix is not handing out all the money for those vanity projects, they got a little extra cash to throw around internationally. Should we address that? Not right now. I don't really think this is the right pod this is in the spirit of suggesting good movies that people watch i know i just if this was

happening a couple years ago maybe one of those movies would be the irishman why does the irishman keep getting kicked in our i don't know what i want to understand interesting choice of verbs since one of the biggest criticisms of the irman is that kicking scene. The curb stomping. That was perhaps a Freudian slip there on my part. Well, let's move away from Netflix. Let's move to Disney. You know, the two titans of modern entertainment. There's a new movie on Disney Plus a couple weeks ago.

Another movie people have been asking us to talk about. There's no way I could get Amanda to talk about this movie. So I'm going to talk about it here by myself. It's called Chipippendale Rescue Rangers. You might be thinking to yourself, that seems like a bit of a juvenile way for Sean to spend 100 minutes of his time on an idle Wednesday night. Let me tell you, my friends, it was, but it's not exactly what you're thinking. This movie, in fact, was directed by Kiva Schaefer, who is one of the three members of The Lonely Island. It was written by Dan Gregor and Doug Mand. And it is, in fact, about Chippendale, the stars of an animated cartoon from the 1990s that I'm sure Andy Samberg grew up on, just as I did. Andy Samberg is the voice of

one of the two rescue rangers. The great John Mulaney is the voice of another one of them. And this movie is interesting to me for one reason. And I'm a little bit torn on it. So I'm going to try to work through my feelings here, Bobby. On the one hand, it's definitely the spiritual cousin of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Yes. It had that reputation even before it came out. People were hoping and theorizing that this could possibly be at the level of Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

I wouldn't say it's quite there, but i like what it's trying to do um i say that because it's a fusion of kind of live action and animation and actually multiple forms of animation and multiple figures from various intellectual property landscapes not just in the disney world but kind of across all culture there's a sonic the hedgehog figure in this. There are DC characters in this. There are Warner Brothers figures in this. It's kind of amazing what they were able to pull off here. The plot of the movie is it takes place in a world where the cartoons live alongside

humans and it centers on Chip and Dale since the 30 years since the cancellation of their show. And they've had a falling out and they're coming back together to reconcile their differences. And their friend Monterey Jack, who I think was the pilot in the original series, um,

has been kidnapped and they need to figure out where he is and this web of intrigue that he has fallen into. And so it's kind of a mystery movie, but it's mostly just a series of comic bits. And it's pretty funny. It's pretty loaded in terms of its cast, you know, like Eric Banna, Keegan, Michael Key, Will Arnett, terms of its cast you know like eric bannock keegan michael key will arnett seth rogan you know kiki lane plays one of the only real humans in the film

ellie steckler um jk simmons is in this tim robinson is in this also a lot of classic voice actors are reprising their roles you know like we hear from lumiere from the beauty from beauty and the beast we hear from baloo from the jungle book we hear from roger rabbit we hear from lumiere from the from beauty and the beast we hear from baloo from the jungle book we hear from roger rabbit we hear from a number of figures uh throughout the world of animation over the last 30 years 40 years 50 years it's pretty fun however it's also it's very wry and it has that like a kind of like ironic exuberance that i think a lot of the lonely islands best stuff has it is a little bit in free guy territory here though where it's a little bit of like you're

manipulating me with your IP to get invested in a story that isn't really about anything. So I'm a bit torn just a little bit but I do think a lot of people are really enjoying this movie and I think appreciating what it's trying to accomplish in this world of

I don't know like universes meeting each other and you know characters from the multiverse connecting over time and history this is like kind of putting its thumb in the eye of that concept by showing all of these figures as basically like backstage performers instead of their actual selves the convention culture that um the chip care or the dale character goes through i think is is really really funny at the beginning of this movie especially the ugly sonic bit you remember ugly sonic from the sonic like the first iteration of sonic the hedgehog before they before they improved upon the animation yeah this this movie features

the original sonic so not that's pretty fun to. It is pretty funny. He wears human teeth. Well, I know, I see that you've noted here that Seth Rogen's character is based on the motion capture technology of the Polar Express, which has become its own little meme for how just truly nightmare fuel, how much of nightmare fuel that technology is.

Like, close your eyes and see that. You know how many times they showed that to me when I was a child, Sean? And now this is the world that we live in it's funny that i mean that's only what 15 18 years ago when those movies were coming out beowulf and polar express and um we're now fully in on the joke that that was horrifying that robert zemeckis did that yep he that like it's truly upset small children the world over um anyway chippinale is fun you know it's i could see it being like a fun movie for an 11 year old i could see it being a fun movie for a sad uh 40

something you know sitting in his garage by himself watching it um trying to write down all the references like if a guy if a guy like that existed i'm just saying um he could be sad he could be uh making notes during watch anyway um let's go to the third movie third movie comes out today friday june 3rd fire island much anticipated we've talked about a couple times in this pod i don't want to say too much because i think amanda wants to talk about this and um i think she's going to want to talk about it especially because and i did not realize this before i sat down, this movie is a riff on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. This movie is available right now on Hulu. It's a Fox Searchlight production. Fox Searchlight, the hallowed, I guess, indie mega shingle that has produced many Best Picture winner. Now that Fox is a part of Disney, it's also creating this brand of

kind of made for TV movies, so to speak. I don't mean that in a pejorative sense, but it's directed by Andrew Ahn, who directed 2019's Driveways starring the late Brian Dennehy. And that was one of our favorite movies of that year.

Amanda and I talked about it a number of times on the show. So I really was looking forward to this. And it's the screenplays by Joel Kim Booster, who's a very popular comedian, very online figure. I would say if you're very online,

this movie is going to work for you a lot because it is written in the parlance of someone who lives online. The story is about two best friends who go on a week-long vacation to Fire Island. And it's primarily focused on the thriving gay community that visits Fire Island to celebrate. I vacationed in Fire Island as well.

Having come from Long Island, it's a beautiful place. It's a little bit of like a... It's not like fairytale-esque, but it is a little fantasy world where nothing matters. I'm going there next weekend. Are you really? Yeah. Have you been before? I have not. I mean, it's a place

where you don't need watches. Just do it on your own time. And the movie is pretty funny about that it's definitely like we're just taking a week to just drink flirt hook up maybe meet somebody that we really like maybe not everything is transient it doesn't matter life is kind of meaningless in this world in a good way um and it's you know it transposes that feeling onto the pride and prejudice storyline and you know it stars joel kim booster as well and bowen yang from snl and they play these kind of best friend characters and the movie is like a romance and of course it's like um it's a story

about gay love and we don't see a lot of stories like this about gay love they're becoming a little bit more prominent in the culture but comedies especially we really don't see i guess later this summer we'll have bros from um billy eichner and Judd Apatow that a lot of people are really looking forward to. I know Amanda's looking forward to that. This is a version of that too, slightly different, slightly more sentimental, I think, than what we'll get in Bros. But the reason that I really, what I liked about it, and I thought it was good. It's not a full-throated recommendation, but I did think it was very compelling. Eileen and I watched it together a couple nights ago. It's a really good movie about friendship. And the relationship between Booster and Yang is really, really... They are friends in real life, and you can sense that

when you watch the show. And the idea of the insecurities that you have that you're even afraid to share with your closest friends in the world is something that they hit on that I thought was really effective. And I think it's worth it just for that. The other thing that I thought was funny about this movie is that it was originally developed for Quibi. And watching the movie, I'm like, how could this possibly have been a Quibi project? I guess, do you think it would have been like 107-minute installments? What would have been the approach they would have? I don't know. I guess there's a lot of like

if you're asking me to try to understand Quibi's content strategy even now two years later, that's a fool's errand. It is a fool's errand. So RIP Quibi, but hey, Fire Island lives on Hulu

where you can check it out. Check that one out if you get a chance. Here's a completely different kind of recommendation. I can't say that I would recommend this to you, Bobby, because I don't know if this is

really in your wheelhouse, but for the horror heads that like this show, The Sadness is a movie that is on Shudder right now. This is among the most extreme movies this has been made

in the last 20 plus years that I have seen and can recommend on the show it's written and directed by a guy named rob jabas who i i don't think he's made anything before this um it's it's a film about a taiwanese couple who reunite amidst a viral pandemic and that pandemic turns people into homicidal maniacs so it's like kind of a zombie movie, kind of a viral outbreak, you know,

pandemic movie and mostly just like pure splatter core. Like every five minutes, there's something just extraordinarily gross happening. Like people just like vomiting blood on each other or like pulling each other's like bleeding eyeballs out of their heads. Sounds like parenthood. It's what I hear. It's really gross,

but it's also really, it's an accomplishment to make something that is this nauseating, nauseating. That's the word. Um, it's not going to be for everybody. You know, if you are looking for a date night movie,

unless you're a fucking freak like me uh this is not a date night movie i could never get eileen to watch a movie like this but um i should say baron ju and regina played a couple in the film and um it is based on a comic book series and it's it's it's something it's something unique is what i'll say i didn't want to let too much time pass before i mentioned it maybe cr and i will will get into it a little bit more when we start doing some horror episodes later into the fall. But thus far, it's one of the more interesting horror installments of 2022.

Number five is kind of a cheat, not really a cheat. It's kind of a cheat because the guys who make these movies kind of cheat every time they do this. It's jackass 4.5. Now, Chris and I did spend a lot of time talking about Jackass forever when it was released this spring.

One of the more fun episodes of the year so far. One of the more fun movies of the year so far. And every time they put out a Jackass movie, they, a few months later, put out these half installments. And they're like one part making of slash commentary and one part deleted scenes

kind of welded together. And so you get a little bit of insight into how they crafted the stunts that they did in the original film. You get a little bit of insight of like what they were going for and then how things changed. It's not dissimilar, say,

from like the Barry podcast that we've been working on, Bobby, together, where Bill Hader tells us how he made the show, you know? And he's like, what we imagined was we were going to do this

and then we shot this and then we cut out this Jackass 4.5 is kind of the same thing Jeff Tremaine and Spike Jones and Johnny Knoxville they're talking about bulls plowing them over honestly yes yes the things that they cut out are

speaking of nauseating this is perhaps a double feature with the sadness you know most of the stunts that they did cut are not up to snuff to what's in Jackass Forever, which I thought was really one of the best things that they've done thus far. There are two of them that are really great, though. One is, I'll just say, a COVID test setup

that works really well. It could be considered in poor taste, but I didn't think so. And then the conclusion features the man known as Dark Shark, who, if you've seen the original you know is jasper's dad jasper's a new cast member for the jackass crew and his father is a is an la crip who's been shot nine times who is uh not afraid of anything in the world except for like a couple of things like birds and like flying in airplanes and this stunt concludes the film the airplane stunt and it's worth it it is absolutely worth it so jackass four and a half that's on

netflix and i don't i don't really understand this because if you want to watch jackass forever it's on paramount plus so why is jackass 4.5 on netflix i don't what's going on in our culture bobby that's a suits question i don't i don't bother myself with suits questions. I have them all now. I've lost or I've won. I don't even know. But I can open up an app and watch basically anything at this point. How long can we sustain this? Not long. this. And I'm like, it'll be easy for me to recommend movies that are on 19 different services because everyone has $500 of disposable income every month to watch all of these shows and films. Obviously, we go out of our way to create some diversity, not just amongst the streamers, but the kinds of films that are made. But it's asking a lot of people. I'm not necessarily rooting for consolidation, but it is hard when quality work is on so many different

places and people just can't afford it yeah that's true i i tend to think that a lot of people end up just renting these things one time from a place like amazon even if it's not going to be available as quickly as it would on the streamer that it eventually lands on like they wait and they come back to an episode like this so it's okay is that better or worse the idea of just renting it from amazon um in in what respect morally maybe we better not get into that yeah save that for another time uh let's go to another movie i wanted to resurface this one because it actually has not hit with the boom that i was expecting it to which is navalny i talked about this movie in the aftermath of

sundance it's directed by Daniel Rohrer. It's a documentary. You can currently find it on HBO Max. It was originally, I think, supposed to premiere on CNN+. And then CNN+, went the way of the Dodo like 18 days after it launched.

It got quibbied. It got quibbied after Jason Kylar was booted out of the Warner Media Discovery media discovery merger and david zaslav came in and then he put his mark on things right away by getting rid of cnn plus a lot of that material got moved over to either cnn linear or hbl max this stuff is very confusing looking back to the movie in a second i know this is the problem with this with our landscape right now and also the problem with me that i'm like a little too interested in this stuff, frankly. But Navalny is fascinating. It follows Alexei Navalny, who's the man who

survived an assassination attempt by poisoning with a lethal nerve agent in August of 2020. And during his recovery, he decided to collaborate with Rohrer on this documentary and go on a quest to find out who tried to kill him. Now, he's a political candidate who has been running against Putin in Russia and is a very modern figure in political culture. He is very adept at Instagram and he's memed frequently. He appears on TikTok all the time. He's very good at Twitter, et he has a strong social following and he's a complex political figure as well he has is a very um he's this strange blend of classical progressive up with the people and also a bit has a libertarian streak that i think attracts a kind of unseemly side of the society in russia as well a kind of unseemly side of the society in Russia as well,

a kind of fascistic side of the culture and maybe even some white supremacists. And so he's not like a pure hero and he's not necessarily portrayed as a pure hero, but the movie does portray him in the tone of a spy thriller. Like that's the kind of movie that they're trying to make. And it's really good. And there's a scene in the movie that is unforgettable in which he basically like traps someone into revealing to him how he was, how the assassination attempt was meant to play out. And it's remarkable. It's better than anything you'll see in like Humphrey Bogart movie.

It's really, really good. I loved this movie. I thought it was a huge accomplishment and it doesn't really feel like it's gotten the celebration that I was expecting it to. And it's in the news because just this week, Navalny said on Instagram, he shared a message saying that he's facing a new criminal accusation that could extend the current prison term he's serving to significantly longer. An investigator

visited him in prison to declare that the authorities have opened a new investigation against him on charges of, quote, creating an extremist group to fan hatred against officials and oligarchs and trying to stage unsanctioned rallies. Obviously, everything that's been happening in Russia and the Ukraine over the last few months has been very, very upsetting and scary. And Navalny was kind of like a canary in the coal mine, I think, for a lot of people in a specific sector of the world. And so his story is really, really resonant now. In addition to being entertaining in kind of

traditional movie ways, it's very important. So I would highly recommend people check this movie out. It's quite good. Okay, let's go to something I don't know about lighter, but different. Next movie I'm going to recommend is on AMC+. I don't know if people have AMC+. I'm actually going to recommend two movies that are on AMC+.

Here's the case for it, okay? One, obviously you get AMC. And so if you're watching Better Call Saul, for example, that's a way to watch it. That's how I watch it. I watch it on AMC+. In addition to that, you can also get Shudder, which I've already mentioned here for the sadness

because they're owned by the same company. In addition to that, you can get IFC Unlimited, I've already mentioned here for the sadness because they're owned by the same company in addition to that you can get IFC Unlimited which is also a part of this whole world and in addition to that you get Sundance Now which is also a part of this

whole corporate apparatus so this episode is one part telling you about movies I like and one part telling you about streaming services and how they've been

bundled AMC Plus also gets a lot of independent films because of its IFC relationship and so duel was another movie that debuted at sundance it was written and directed by riley stearns who was a guest on this show we talked to him about his last movie the art of self-defense yep very very interesting guy quite a stoic individual um i don't know were you were you present for that conversation bobby i think i was yeah um didn't we we talk to Eisenberg around that same time too?

We did because he's the star. He was the star of the art of self-defense. Yes. And this movie has the same tonality as the art of self-defense, which is very deadpan and wry in the face of absurdity. Here's a premise. Soft science fiction movie. Clones are the norm in our world for people who contract

serious illnesses. So if you get sick, especially prematurely, and you are concerned about leaving a family behind or having unfinished business that you want to complete, you essentially can order a clone, and that clone will come in and take over. And they have all the

affectations of your personality, they have your memory, your history, everything they can slot right in. But their bodies are not weak and frail. They're fully healthy in a way that yours isn't. And so the movie follows this woman played by Karen Gillan who gets very sick. And then a clone comes into her life and they start to incorporate her into their lives and she steps out of the life. And then suddenly she gets healthy. And so what do you do when you've got a clone in the world that has taken your spot and started to build relationships

with all the people that you care about? Well, in this culture, you have to have a fight to the death. And so Karen Gillan begins this training to defeat her clone. And she's trained by Aaron Paul. This is a fun movie. It sounds maybe not that fun.

It's very odd. It's very disorienting as all of Riley Stearns' films are. It has a very dark sense of humor. I'm a big Karen Gillan fan. So for that reason, I liked it. I like that she continues to make movies like this and not just Jumanji and Avengers Endgame. So I would recommend it. I think that sounds fun. I think that I like that she continues to make movies like this and not just Jumanji and Avengers Endgame so I would recommend it I think that sounds fun

I think that sounds like a great elevator pitch it's sort of like if you're in an elevator seconds after you took a bong rip in college and you're like

what if we had clones man and like when we went away like our clones just kind of took over what would that be like but like you know I trust the people who made this idea

so I don't think it's just a dumb bong rip idea I think some bong rip ideas are good yes the sophisticated bong rip is a subcategory we should highlight in the future because i tend to like those movies too i like really high concept medium execution on a lot of movies so if you're into that this is worth it um another recommendation that's on amc plus and this this one is a little bit more difficult to be enthusiastic about, but I think it is important. The film is called Nitrum and it stars Caleb Landry Jones and Judy Davis and Essie Davis and Anthony LaPaglia, you know, three luminaries of Australian cinema. And it revolves around the life and behaviors of an intellectually disabled

young man called Nitrum. It's based on Martin Bryantant who's a real figure in australia nitrum of course is martin spelled backwards it's an unmistakable coincidence there um the events that are portrayed in the film lead up to his involvement in the 1996 port arthur massacre in tasmania australia which if you know anything about history of Australia and gun control globally, is a signature event because the mass shooting that Bryant was responsible for changed the culture of guns in that country. We have a lot of Australian listeners. If I'm getting anything wrong here, I apologize. But as I understand it, this was a very, very important event.

And the film doesn't really focus on that event. It focuses on Nitram's life in the run-up to it and tries to carefully, non-judgmentally portray not why he did anything, but who he was and what he was doing.

And it's... This movie came out a few months ago and I didn't recommend it because it made me really queasy and not in the sadness way of like, wow, this is so bloody. It's really, really hard to watch this movie came out a few months ago and I didn't recommend it because it made me really queasy and not in the sadness way of like, wow, this is so bloody. It's really, really hard to watch this movie because it doesn't make any judgments about mental health necessarily. It's more just the deeply unsettling awfulness of the world that sometimes descends upon us. And we saw that happen in Uvalde, Texas a couple of weeks ago, which is like literally the worst thing that has happened in a long time and has obviously traumatized

hundreds of people in Texas. And I think even for people that are thousands of miles away has been forced us into a serious reflection. And obviously as a nonviolent person, I just wish we didn't have any guns in our culture. And you look at a story like this and the way that it's told and the way that Australia changed its gun laws in the aftermath of something like this. And you think about what we could have in the United States and what we should have in the United States. And it's weird to use a movie to kind of force these feelings on the people. And hope people take this in good faith when i share this but um i've been thinking about a lot i've been thinking about having a kid and putting a kid in school and all the things that a lot of you know millions of other people around the country around the world are thinking about in these recent weeks and while this movie is not fun at all and is very very dark and raw. It is important. And most movies are not important. But what I think this movie is trying to accomplish,

I think, has value. So it's kind of with a heavy heart and a big caution sign. I'll recommend Nitrum to people. But if you are interested in stories like this, if you feel like you can bear it, I would recommend checking it out.

That is also on AMC plus something a little lighter something a little more open-hearted there's a richard linklater movie on netflix and i did just come and go bob yep like what did you watch it nope Nope. What the hell? What is going on in our culture? I've been busy, man. I know, I know, I know. I just moved. I'm still getting settled.

It's really hard to move. I know, and the Mets are on fire. I can never turn them off. I know. This movie's called Apollo 10 1⁄2, a space-age childhood. I think it's got a medium reception. It's another one of his rotoscoped animation films much like um waking life or a scanner darkly very different tone than those two films whereas waking life was very sort of philosophical and almost um hallucinatory

and uh scanner darkly was you know really science fiction ethereal. This is a pure memory movie. The script is almost entirely just this linear series of fragmented memories from Linklater's childhood. Really as a fourth grader watching what happened with NASA and the moon landing,

but then also imagining himself participating in the moon landing. And it's this odd kind of fictional documentary. And I thought it was really beautiful. And I'm not a big Jack Black person, but Jack Black narrates it. And I thought his narration was incredible. I thought it was really involving and sweet. I thought the performances were really, really good all the way through. And it's not a high stakes movie. It's not something you have to race out and watch tonight. But if you like the vibe of the Linklater world, if you like his writing style, this kind of ambling, thoughtful, like mega deep, but soft focus approach to, you know, obviously the relationship that we all have with time, which

is the emerging and dominant theme of all of his work, but also family and friendship and trying to remember what happened to you when you were a kid and how you can't always remember exactly what happened. But it's those little details that are actually more resonant than the big picture of what happened. This movie has like a hundred of those little remembrances that I thought was really powerful. So I would highly recommend you check it. Bobby, you should check it out. I think it's really good. Okay, will do. Should I go on a Linklater kick?

Should I watch every Linklater film in one weekend? How do you think I would come out and our next recording if I did that? I don't think you have enough time. I think he might have 48 hours worth of movie in his career. I'm looking at all of his films on my shelf right now. I mean, I'm spotting at least 15 there. He's made a lot of movies. You know, there's actually at all of his films on my shelf right now. I mean, I'm spotting at least 15 there. He's made a lot of movies.

You know, there's actually a movie of his that is on the Criterion channel right now that has been very hard to see for a while called Tape starring Ethan Hawke and Robert Sean Leonard and Uma Thurman. It was shot on, it's either shot on VHS, it must be VHS tape, hence the title, like a camcorder.

About three people, it's like a you know one setting kind of film over one night uh it is really interesting and it's kind of interesting in our culture now about um accusations and the way that people treat each other in relationships I would also recommend people check that out because that one is not as well known as the dazed and confused of the world and, you know, the school of rock style movies. It's a little bit different, a little bit more of an experiment in the same way that I feel like Apollo 10 and a half is a little bit of an experiment. You know, I love the idea of Richard Linklater getting to do a vanity project at Netflix, you know, getting to spend their money in a way that other studios may not be willing to fund. So hopefully that continues uh despite their protestations um okay last movie uh we didn't talk about tony hawk until the wheels fall off

which is on on hbo max a sports documentary very long sports documentary i think it's over two hours it's directed by sam jones who many people will know as um the host of i think it's off camera with sam jones which is a longtime interview show he's talked to many of the who many people will know as the host of, I think it's Off Camera with Sam Jones, which is a longtime interview show. He's talked to many of the biggest actors, actresses, directors, writers in Hollywood over the years. He's also a documentarian. He made I Am Trying to Break Your Heart,

the 2002 Wilco documentary about the making of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, one of my favorite music docs. And he's pretty skilled at getting people to be intimate. And he's got Tony Hawk being pretty intimate about the whole arc of his life. I don't always love the kind of quote-unquote cradle-to-grave treatment on certain documentaries.

If you've seen any of the documentaries we work on at The Ringer, we try to avoid that most of the time. But Hawk obviously has had a big life, a very influential life. There's so much footage of him because he's been captured competing in professional skateboarding events since he was 13 years old. There's so many things about him that I didn't know.

I'm not a big skateboarding person. I will not pretend to claim that. So a lot of this stuff was new to me. If you're in that world, I think you might find a lot of this a little bit redundant to what you already know. But one, I did not know about the relationship he had with his father and the way that his father kind of insinuated himself into the world of professional skateboarding which I thought was fascinating and I thought Tony was really reflective about that and then the thing that really stuck with me is the last 20 minutes of the movie where Tony Hawk after 50 plus years just beating the shit out of his body is continuing to beat the shit out of his body

to the bewilderment of so many people around him. And the idea of when do you quit? When do you retire? When do you give up the thing you love for the sake of your own health or I don't know, good mental health or any number of things. It was really interesting

and really well told by the filmmakers and showing him trying to do tricks at 50 something years old that he couldn't pull off when he was 28 is really fascinating because he's kind of monomaniacally obsessed with succeeding. And I think a lot of people relate to it.

A lot of people will be horrified by it. A lot of people will feel for him. A lot of people will think that he's a lunatic, but it was very effective. You know, like that. And, you know, Bobby, you know, like we're all about sports here at the ringer and there's so many athletes who just don't know when to quit well it's that kind of thing that athletes talk about where they feel like they're the best when they're like 37 because they know so much but we know as

as fan or we know it or we can reflect back upon when athletes are actually the best is like when they're 27 to 32 because that's just when they're physically the best. But that feeling of you've been in this for so long, you feel like you're getting better linearly every year. That's like how the human brain compartmentalizes what you do as your profession. But you don't have that. A lot of athletes don't have that ability to say, I'm not as good as I used to be. I'm going to change. And the ones who do have that ability, I think, are extremely unique. They to accomplish you know what i mean it's not like you can have it is very like pass fail you either pull the trick off or you fall and that's not how most sports are so it's a sort of unique i think blending of a lot of those like athlete brain things it's also like if you are a pitcher and you're 39 and you your slider isn't biting anymore you give up a home run but you don't die like in

skateboarding you can die i mean it is dangerous what these guys are doing and this movie goes to great pains to show you that so it's a unique kind of sports film too it also reminded me a little bit of um you know you'll read an interview with like jackson brown or keith richards or someone like that and they'll be like i'm playing as well as I ever have. Or my songwriting is as good as it's ever been. And people who are, you know, a little bit, there's certainly a sincerity to what they're saying, but there's a little bit of delusion into telling yourself, like I should be as relevant as I used to be

because my skills are more sharpened and more honed. And trying to hold on to relevance centrality or even just that like ineffable verve that succeeding gives people is a really interesting pursuit to me it's a really interesting idea for a movie and so like this film ultimately turned out to be like about that and um i just want you to know like when you feel that i can no longer pull off the 1080 of podcasting. I was going to say, when you're trying to do the 100 movie Tom Cruise Hall of Fame, when he's still going and you're still trying to go alongside of him in 2057, I'm going to be like, hey, maybe it's time to hang them up.

Are you still with me at that 35 like 35 years later in 2057? Are we still working together? God, I'm going to be early retired, Sean. I'm going to be retired before that. You're going to be, yeah, you're going to be 65. And I'm going to be 75. Sheesh. That's fucking bleak, dude.

Can I tell you, we have a fun, we have a fun, I'm turning 40 podcast coming up on the big picture though i gotta tell you i'm really excited about what we're gonna do that's all i'm gonna say to the listeners out there um all right this has been good so you're gonna watch some of these movies yeah i hope everybody does i hope so too i hope people enjoy this um it it's actually really easy for me i was gonna say it's hard but it's not this is what i love to do so i'm just really grateful that people care. All right.

Well, thanks, Bob. Let's go to my conversation now with David Cronenberg. It is an honor to be talking to David Cronenberg today. Thank you for doing the show today david thank you so sir it's been eight years since your last film did you ever in that time allow yourself to think that maps of the stars might be your final film i did think that i actually

thought cosmopolis might be my last film and then uh maps came together after 10 years of thinking about it and working with bruce wagner I thought, okay, I'll make this one more film because it's coming together. And then that's it. And I thought that I would write another novel and maybe just settle into being a novelist, which is what I first thought I would be. Well, Crimes of the Future is something that you wrote a long time ago, and I guess you sort of retooled it. Why was now the right time to revisit it? Was this just one that you could get made, or was there something that spurred it?

Yeah, it's a very banal, very pragmatic, really. I mean, I had a producer, Robert Lantos, who I had worked with before, and he said, David, you know, have you read your old script? Because I think I would really like to make that movie with you. And I said, well, I don't know. I mean, I'm sort of kind of okay with not making any more movies. And he said, well, you should read it because it's really quite good. And I said, I'm sure it's completely irrelevant now because it has sci-fi overtones and technology moves on. And I'm sure the world has caught up with and surpassed what I wrote. And he said, no, it's more relevant than ever.

And I thought, okay, that's a pretty good line. I think a good line of dialogue. I think I will read it again. And I did. And I started to get excited about doing it. That surprised me. But I thought, well, I'm not going to fight it. I mean, I said, Robert, if you can finance it, I'm willing to do it. And it still took him three years from that moment to get it financed because that's independent filmmaking these days.

What did he see in it that he felt was as relevant as ever? Well, I think he thought the whole element of climate change and evolution of the body and changes forced upon us by technology and so on, I think he felt that suddenly that was, I mean, nobody was talking about microplastics 20 years ago. And then suddenly everybody's talking about microplastics and microplastics in the bloodstream. Every day there's another revelation, microplastics in our bodies of maybe 80% of the world's population. Quite a shocking idea. And then you read that, strangely, the human body seems to be okay with these microplastics rather than, let's say, causing cancer or some other diseases. Is that because the body is actually finding a way to

use these plastics or what? So, we don't know, but those possibilities are kind of intriguing. And I think that that's definitely what he was seeing. So, it's been noted that this is a real return to a certain kind of form for you. It feels classic Cronenberg is what a lot of people are saying. I was wondering, since you haven't made a film with this kind of quote unquote transgressive physiological aspect in a long time, has the filmmaking technology improved significantly in terms of how you make some of the kind of creature feature aspects of some of these films? Oh, yes, it has. I mean, certainly as far back as existence, we created

a creature, a sort of twin headed lizard creature that was totally CG. So that was very present even then. But it's gotten to be less expensive and much more flexible. You can really do a lot of stuff now that you couldn't do then. And you can do it efficiently and cheaply. So that means that in terms of design, in terms of budget, in terms of flexibility to react to opportunities that present themselves that you hadn't anticipated. It's much better now. I mean, CG, visual effects, it's always been, to me, just another tool in the toolbox.

It's not like, oh my God, I have to use this to do everything. But it's a lovely mix of physical of physical prosthetic effects and visual effects. And they can enhance each other. It really brings great possibilities onto the film set. You don't have to worry about things as much as you used to, you know, because you can always tweak it after the fact. And that, for a filmmaker, is fantastic. Is that sort of work fun for you to do? Because obviously it is a tool

that you need to tell the story, but do you like having, you know, building these sarcophagi or these, you know, these surgical tables? You know, we're just children playing in the sandbox, really, when we make a movie, honestly.

I mean, beyond the seriousness and the money and the pressure and all of that, it's like we're, you know're putting on mustaches and wearing funny clothes and pretending to be other people and doing funny accents. It's just child play, you know? So, yeah, it's really fun. Playing with visual effects is really fun. It's astonishing fun. You know, the tagline and the sort of mantra of the film is surgery is the new sex and

body transformation and mutilation is this framing. But this feels like a real amusing satire of the art world in a lot of ways. And I know that you had written this 20 years ago with a different kind of art world in mind. But in this age of NFTs and cryptocurrency grifters, I mean, it really feels pretty resonant. Had you been thinking about what's happening in the culture in that respect too with this story? Oh, sure. I mean, I've already done an NFT video and an NFT offering of my kidney stones as an art object, you know.

So I'm willing to play those games as well. It's kind of a lot of fun. And it's a combination. It's a gentle satire, let's say, because I also think it's also valid. It can be absurd, but it can also be valid. So, I'm not making a sort of absolute judgment on it. I have great affection for my characters. I think you should, I'm sure you feel that in the movie. And they are sincere about what they're doing. And it's really of the essence for them, what they're doing. And I, when I write those characters, I believe what they believe.

You know, I mean, when you write characters, you have to be an actor who is playing that role. And you have to believe what they're believing in order to write their dialogue. So I have great affection for that and uh and for the for this the some of the craziness of the art world it's it's pretty inventive some of it's absurd and ridiculous and some of it's really potent and and important you know the film um even more than i think some of your best known works is a real genre mashup too or at least it felt that way to me. You know, it felt a bit like a noir. It felt, you know, certainly like a love story.

There's a little bit of a kind of a cultish mystery going on. And it's very funny. I was wondering if you think about genre convention when you're writing, are you thinking about how to put those things together? Or is it more of just a natural unfurling of the story idea? Well, obviously, of course, from having seen movies since I was a kid, I have absorbed the parameters of various genres.

But when I'm making the movie, when I'm writing it, I don't think about genre at all. I think that would be very limiting. And thinking about genre doesn't really give me creatively anything useful for me. I don't need it. I don't find it useful. And so I think ultimately it's a marketing question.

Do you market this movie as a horror film, a sci-fi film, a noir film, a sort of strange combination of the both? And how do you do that? But that is not what i'm thinking about while i'm making the movie so to me it's an after you know after market effect uh question really when you were putting the cast together did you find that you know and you have this incredible cast of actors that they were excited by the idea of participating in a classic crronenbergian story? Well, certainly Leia was, absolutely, and Kristen, absolutely, and Scott really was as well. Yeah, so Viggo, of course, we worked together many, you know,

four times before, so it was different for him. But, and for Scott, for example, being Canadian, and I, as he was developing as a filmmaker, an actor, I was very present in his mind as a Canadian who had made films successfully and so on. So for each of them, it was a different thing. But for Leia, you know, she's French and the French are great cineasts and they really think very highly of the director as the key. And often French actors, I mean, they say to me and they mean it, if you call me, I will come for whatever role. And then that's not a very American attitude where they'd say, well, as long as the role is interesting, I'll do it. With the French, it's sort of, I'll work with this director no matter what he wants. So in each case, it was different.

But in each case, yes, I was a bit of an attraction. Thank God. Scott was the real revelation for me. I don't know that I had seen him in anything like this. I thought he was really wonderful. But I was hoping you could talk a little bit more about the partnership you and Vigo have. This is, I guess, a little bit different from the last couple that you've made together and certainly more in that classic mold that we're discussing. But what is it about him as a leading man for you that you really connect to? And what is

your relationship been like over these years? Well, this is the first time he's worked on a film of mine that I wrote myself, that I wrote the script for. The other three were other writers based on other writers. And so it was the first time that he had basically been in a, you know, for a fan, purist Cronenberg film. But he was very excited to do it. I love Viggo because, yes, he's a handsome, charismatic leading man, but he's also like a character actor. You know, he's not he's really got a lot of complexity and depth to what he does and texture.

And so that gives me so much to work with. Plus, he's you know, when you get Viggo, you don't just get an actor, you get a collaborator who is also a director himself a screenwriter photographer uh composer publisher i mean he does it all and he's he so he brings so much to the film set you know and uh and we we do talk about every aspect of the movie and and and it's a full full-on collaboration i was hoping you could talk a little bit about directing performance, maybe through the lens of Kristen Stewart, because she's very funny and very slightly unnerving in the film.

And she makes a very specific choice with the voice that she's using. Where does something like that come from? Is that entirely her interpretation of the character? Are you giving her a sense of, here's how I imagine this person and making comparisons to what they should be doing? No, it's entirely her. It's entirely her. I think at times she was shocked that I wasn't really directing her

because that's my style. I mean, I basically, well, Ralph Fiennes, who acted in my movie, Spider, said it was the least directing he ever got on a movie. And he was saying that as a compliment because it is. I have no ego as a director. I don't need to make a statement by manipulating my actors or deconstructing them or whatever. I don't give them line readings. I want to see what they have. I trust them. They're professional actors. They're intelligent. I cast't give them line readings. I want to see what they have. I trust them.

They're professional actors. They're intelligent. I cast them for a reason. And I just want to see what they do. And so unless they're really somehow gone off the rails in the wrong direction because they've had a misunderstanding that rarely happens, I just leave them alone. I mean, I just give little tweaks and we discuss how to choreograph the scene and so on visually. But how they proceed with their use of their voice, their posture. I mean, Kristen was doing all of that. It's very unusual for her. And same with Vigo. Different voice, different body.

And so in terms of Kristen's performance, that was totally hers. I mean, at times she was wondering if she knew what she was doing, you know, and I used to say, of course, you're doing it great. Just, I'll tell you, if it goes wrong, I'll let you know. Otherwise, you have to assume that it's right. Simple as that. What about some of the more technical aspects of direction when you have moments like, say, the surgical stomach moment that happens about halfway through the film? There's something very sexual and sensual and illicit about that, but also, I assume, very technical when you're making the movie. So, how are you directing a sequence like that? Yeah.

Honestly, it's literally shot by shot. Each shot tells you what it needs, what it wants. And once again, having the tool of visual effects in your toolbox is fantastic because it's so flexible as i was saying so you have a combination of prosthetics actual building creatures that are puppeteered by puppeteers with rods and then you remove the rods and then but in some shots it's actually 100 cg and not puppeteering but it's based on scans of the actual arms, for example, the surgical arms that we created. But over the years, I've learned how to do all of that stuff. I mean, it changes and the flexibility happens and you're collaborating with special effects people who are on the set

and they're saying, I'm saying, okay, this is what we're going to need in this scene. You telling me, you're reassuring me that you visual effects people can reproduce these surgical arms. And I need this blade to cut into his flesh because we're going to use a real shot of Vigo's torso. So we'll see him breathing. I want you to assure me that when we go to visual effects, you can make an decision in this moving torso. And they say yes, or they say no, you have to do something else. So it's a collaboration. You have a lot of support on the movie, because we understand that each shot is going to be unique. It's going to be something that's never quite been done before. And therefore, you need a lot of people to sort of help you as a director create it. I mentioned earlier, you know, the sarcophagus and the sort of the bed and the surgical table

and this idea of being laid up as kind of one of the visual motifs of the film. Where does that come from for you? Was that something very specific that you wanted to see the body almost strewn and extended that way? Well, that's interesting. I mean, the Viggo's character is unique for him because it's totally reactive role. And it's in a strange way, very passive role.

And yet there has to, and yet there's an aggression in the creativity involved. So we are playing, he's playing a character who is weak, is vulnerable, is, is exposed, is perplexed and nervous and confused. And yet still has the, the desire to connect with an audience through his body. And so that means that that passivity expresses itself in the fact that he's very often slumped in a corner or lying in some device. But you're quite right. I mean,

I know that he's never played another role like that. But that's what it's expressing. He's a damaged character. The relationship between the mind and the body and sometimes the disagreement of those two things is such a big theme in so many of your stories. How has aging affected the way that you think about some of these stories has it has it amplified anything specifically has it changed maybe the way you might look at something like crimes of the future 20 years later after putting it down well i think i was pretty

accurate in predicting my aging i mean there are surprises of course you little strange things happen to your body that you never imagine you know know, why is my toe red like that? What's going on? And you find out about, you know, some syndrome or something that you never heard about, and now you embody it. But the idea that that would happen, I was aware of that when I was a kid for some reason. Don't ask me why. I just was.

So I don't really think it's affected my filmmaking per se I mean it's basically I'm saying to myself yep I was right all along aging is going to be tricky you know it's going to be tricky it's going to have some surprises that I'm not going to like um uh so in essence I could say it probably hasn't directly affected. It's just confirmed what I always feared. I talked to your son, Brandon last year about his wonderful movie possessor. And, um, I was, I asked him about you, of course, and I wanted to ask you, what is it like to watch your child go off and make art that is so clearly inspired by you, but also

sort of on its own path? What has that experience been like? That's wonderful. I mean, it's just lovely. He was shooting his third movie while I was shooting mine. He was shooting in Budapest and I was shooting in Athens, not very far away. So we were making movies together in tandem, which was absolutely delightful. I mean, I don't think there's any parent who wouldn't have been delighted by that. Are you swapping notes? Are you trading trade secrets?

There are no trade secrets, but it's very pragmatic stuff. You worked with this actor. What was he like? That kind of thing. Or an actor's agent says this, should I believe it? And I say, probably not. That kind of thing, very pragmatic, nothing really earth-shaking or abstract. And then we show each other our scripts

and we show each other our first cuts and we want a reaction. And it's not really, I don't give him notes, he doesn't give me notes, but we do talk a lot once we've reached certain points in our filmmaking. And that's really quite delightful. And my youngest daughter, Kate, is on the verge of making her first movie. So, you know, there'll be additional action going on in the family. This film is opening in movie theaters, but the business has shifted a lot since you last had a film in movie theaters. I'm wondering what you make of the streaming era and the way that we consume films. And since you've been such a bastion of, you know, independent underground movie going culture.

Sure. Oh, I love streaming. I mean, I almost never go to the theater, actually. And I've been like that for many years. So streaming to me is just a gift. I love it. I think it's great, frankly. And I'm not surprised that the pandemic really accelerated the acceptance of streaming and watching cinema at your home. I mean, there's a big discussion in France because there's such cinephiles and they sort of revere directors and they revere cinema. And they're very worried about the decline of movie houses, basically, theaters. And I'm not so worried about it.

I mean, because I don't think that's the end of cinema. It just might be the end of cinema. It just might be the end of cinema in theaters, you know, but because the technology is so good and the image quality on your iPad, I mean, if you watch a movie on your iPad, you're really seeing a movie. I don't think that you've lost anything. So, and in terms of the question of community, communal absorbing of a movie, watching it with an audience, my experience has been that that hasn't been great for a long, long time. Maybe in the golden age of theaters in the 40s and 50s, but now I don't find the movie-going experience to be very attractive at all. You're watching commercials, people are looking at their phones, they're eating, talking. I actually have a better experience at home with my television set. So what can I say? I find that a lot of people, at least who listen to our show, are discovering

The Brood and Scanners and a lot of the films that are of your films that are streaming right now, and that they're getting second, third, fourth lives. There's also something that's happening where films like that that are rediscovered then get kind of reimagined, remade, recontextualized. Like, have you been approached to make a streaming Scanners TV series? I have to assume that somebody wants to take the IP that you invented and regurgitated somehow? Well, there was a time when Scanners was going to be a network series. I talked to CBS, NBC, ABC, and those were the big three. And for various reasons, it didn't work out. That's a whole other story. But basically, they said, well, of course, we really love what you're doing. We want to do scanners. But of course, we can't have an exploding head.

And we can't have this. And we can't have that. And we can't have that. And by the end of it, they said, this is kind of boring, actually. And I said, yeah, that's because you took everything interesting out of it. So I've been through that before. Now i know that the current streaming venues are not as shy or not as averse to some extreme things but i think they're still fairly conservative i mean i really found i think netflix which i love but but i think they're still basically like a hollywood studio used to be and so there may be not so likely to do really extreme earth-shaking stuff, but the possibilities of that are absolutely there. And so I think for, as you say, for the discovery of old films in a new context for people, I think that's fantastic. I think it's wonderful.

Is there any one of your stories or films that you'd like to revisit somehow oh no absolutely no absolutely no i mean i think uh rachel vice is doing a new version a series based on dead ringers uh and i was asked to be involved with that and my feeling was just that you know i've done it i mean why would i want to do it again um are you gonna make another film? I know you've been acting. I know you're writing, but can you make a new direct again? I have a screenplay I've written called The Shrouds, which we were able to announce at Cannes because Vincent Cassell, the French actor, agreed to play the lead. And so we were able to announce that we were attempting to make that movie with Vincent in the lead. And if it all works out, I should be shooting that next spring.

That's exciting. I've heard you speak about wanting to reunite with him. And I heard you talking about his performance in Eastern Promises, I think, and how much you loved working with him. What is it about him that you're excited about? About Vincent? Yeah. Yeah, well, he has a unique history in French cinema, but also overlapping into American and English cinema. Great rage, great anger, great emotion, and an incredible intensity.

All of those things, textures that I really feel that would be used in a very unique, interesting way in The Shrouds would be also not his usual kind of movie. And I think, of course, for an actor, that's gold to be as Scott Speedman, for example, in Crimes of the Future, not his usual kind of role. Actors love to not be typecast. They want a challenge and it will be that for Van Song. I really look forward to that. David, we end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers, what is the last great thing that they have seen? Have you seen anything that you've really connected with recently?

I wish you'd asked me before so I could try and remember anything that I've seen. I've seen a lot of great stuff. I mean, I've really, a lot of it is streaming actually. And in particular, this wasn't that recent, but there's a French TV series called Le Bureau in English. It's Le Bureau des Legends, The Bureau of Legends. Legends being sort of the cover story that you have when you're a spy. I thought it was just really beautifully done. So, so textured and so cinematic and a great, great with the wonderful actors and that was that that gave me uh encouragement you know in terms of what streaming could be because it was really a

top class um product you know top top class cinema it's a great recommendation congratulations on crimes in the future thank you so much for doing this, David. Thanks a lot. Thank you to David Cronenberg. Can't believe we had him on the show. Been thinking about his movies for the last 25 years. Thanks to our producer, Bobby Wagner. Stay tuned to The Big Picture. Different kind of energy next week.

We're talking about Adam Sandler and our favorite Adam Sandler movies with our old pal, Rob Harvilla. We'll see you then.