The Big Picture - What Do Disney Sequels, Zombies, a Nazi Comedy, and Steven Soderbergh Have in Common? | The Big Picture

Episode Date: October 18, 2019

Political subtext is everywhere, even at the movies. The weekend's four big releases—'Maleficent: Mistress of Evil'; 'Jojo Rabbit'; 'The Laundromat'; and 'Zombieland: Double Tap'—all have surprising and occasionally confounding nods to the fractured nature of the United States. Amanda and Sean look closely at each movie and the circumstances that led to their messages (2:00). Then, Sean is joined by 'Zombieland: Double Tap' director Ruben Fleischer to discuss the sequel to his 2009 hit, his work on 'Venom,' and more (53:00). Host: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Ruben Fleischer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey guys, it's Liz Kelley and welcome to The Ringer Podcast Network. Once you finish the season finale of HBO's Succession, make sure to tune in to the last episode of The Ringer's after show called Number One Boys with Chris Ryan and Jason Concepcion. You can check that out as well as recaps from the episodes from this season on our Twitter at Ringer and our YouTube page. We also have a lot of great written content about the show from writers like Alison Herman, Katie Baker, and Miles Suri.

You can find that on TheRinger.com. I'm Sean Fennessy. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about art imitating life, life imitating art, and podcasts imitating cable news. Amanda, there is no more annoying form of cultural discussion than blank in the time of Donald Trump. And yet, we find ourselves faced with four new movies this weekend that could comfortably be called politically conscious, perhaps even reactionary pieces of art. And not all of them are what we might have expected. Those movies are Taika Waititi's Jojo Rabbit, which is marketed as a quote-unquote anti-hate satire, Steven Soderbergh's episodic Panama Papers docudrama

The Laundromat, which is now streaming on Netflix, the unlikely Zombieland sequel, Zombieland Double Tap, and Angelina Jolie starring in a sequel to a Sleeping Beauty prequel called Maleficent, Mistress of Evil. Now, later in this podcast, I'll have a conversation with Ruben Fleischer, who made the Zombieland film.

But before we get to that, Amanda, we have to talk about movies in a state of political anxiety, I think? Yes, in the world in a state of political anxiety. And that's, we should start this discussion, you and I had a brief conversation before we started podcasting of, how much do we want to do this?

Because Maleficent definitely is a text about the social organization of America and the world in 2019. And it's also just about sexy fairies. So take everything with a grain of salt. We are not going to be MSNBC moms, but it is hard to have a conversation about anything in 2019 without doing a political reading. And sometimes that's a reflection of the person doing the political reading, and sometimes that's a reflection of the text itself. And I think at least three of these movies, I confess I have not yet seen Zombieland, Double Tap, are engaging with the state of the world in a textual level. Yes. And I think that the idea to do this episode in this way occurred to us while we were watching, of all things, Maleficent, Mistress of Evil. We had some time to think about other things.

That's true. It's a confounding movie. I would say not necessarily a bad movie, but similar to Double Tap, it's not necessary, but it reveals weirdly in the shape of a Disney film, I think a sincere anxiety about us versus them, haves versus have-nots, border wars, the future of Angelina's career. All of these things are sort of in play, all of these fraught conversations. And I think we're not interested in having a Donald Trump conversation. We're not interested in having a Mitch McConnell conversation here. That's not really the point of this. But all of these movies in their own way feel not just like film critics craning their necks very hard to make a point about something. They feel like things that are made to make a comment about the world that we're living in

right now. Now, theoretically, all movies do that. Even the dumbest movies in the world are making it. Even the, I don't know, the Emoji sequel that came out earlier this year has something to say about, I don't know, capitalism or something. Tack in the Age of Despair. But there's something unique about this one. And obviously, we've spent the last couple of weeks talking about Joker and the theoretical anxiety, social upheaval that that movie is attempting to address and reflect. And in the last couple of years, we've seen movies like Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri, which seem to make an effort to communicate about what's happening in the middle of this country that coastal elites don't understand. Green Book last year was obviously this bellwether for a why can't we all just get along culture that some certain comfortable, cozy white guys may be seeing in the world. It's interesting because this stuff always moves in waves and it takes a long time to make a movie. Years and a lot of money. And so movies don't come out and they don't comment immediately on

the Ukraine story and the impeachment. That's going to take two years before we get those movies. We're probably going to get them. We'll probably talk about them on this podcast. But now I think what we're seeing is a lot of like 2017 anxiety on the big screen. Would you agree with that? Yes, absolutely. And it's going to continue as soon as you put together this outline. I was thinking a lot about that timeline and how long it takes to react to things. There's a movie called Bombshell, which is coming out at the end of the year, which is about the Roger Ailes sexual harassment scandal at Fox News, which happened, I believe, in 2015 and 2016 because he was fired during the Republican National Convention in 2016.

And it's taken that long. So that's 2015-16 stuff that is finally making its way to the screen. And I think you're right. I made the distinction earlier. There's a difference between how we respond to a piece of art and what political interpretations we want to find in it or discuss in it. And I think culture and critical conversation has definitely been evolving a lot in the last few years about that, sometimes for good and sometimes in ways that can feel limiting,

I think, to you and me. You know, there's good criticism and bad criticism of all things. But there is the conversation and there is also also things that people are making in a script and someone sitting down and saying, OK, now I will tackle this big subject. And it feels like we're in that moment to the point that a Disney sequel has a text that's like we need to help teach the children about the immigration crisis. It's wild. Truly. It's a story about genocidal warfare. Yes. Which is, I guess, The Lord of the Rings, I suppose, is also about that. I think a great number of things. And, you know, I'm thinking about this and thinking about a movie like Joker.

And earlier this week, we talked about Parasite. Us, I think, was one of the big conversation points of the year. All of those movies are about class and about not taking care of people we think need to be taken care of in the world. And so we draw a lot of the same conclusions. But those movies feel like they are serving up those metaphors explicitly to us and they want them to be the talking point. Parasite, if you don't walk away from that movie thinking it's a driving conversation about class in South Korea and maybe subsequently the world, you're probably not seeing the movie, right? It's okay to enjoy it as a thriller. But ultimately, it's larded with all of this metaphor, even though it's making fun of that

idea with the metaphorical repetition over and over in the movie. But it's in the text. It's the actual, again, not to spoil it, since I'm sorry to all the people who responded to our Parasite podcast being like, I can't see it yet. I know. We believe in you. We're going to try not to spoil it, since I'm sorry to all the people who responded to our Parasite podcast being like, I can't see it yet. I know. We believe in you. We're going to try not to spoil it. You'll get there.

I don't think it spoils it to say that in the text it's about a rich family and a poor family. They address it head on. Yes. And in some ways it does feel like most stories are pitting an us versus them. So you could put this lens onto any film that you want. But this group of films, and we'll talk about each one, I think, individually and then see how they all fit together to understand why and how we got to this point. And I don't think it's as simple as Donald Trump was elected and everyone lost their minds.

I think that's too facile an understanding of how this sort of thing works. Yeah, I think Trump in a lot of ways is this symptom of a larger issue that's also fueling these movies, which is the need to conflate personal beliefs. And it's the same reason that brands are like, hey, we also think that you should be nice to everyone, buy our cheeseburger or whatever. It reminds me a little bit of the Kendall Jenner Pepsi commercial. Yeah. You remember that? There is a version of that.

And maybe we'll use that as a transition to talk a little bit more about Maleficent, Mistress of Evil, because it kind of feels like the Pepsi commercial version of these ideas. Now, I don't think that most people will walk away from this movie feeling as acutely strange about the political ramifications of the movie as you and I did. I think there were also moments during the movie where at various times you and I just turned to each other and just like, what the fuck is going on here? That's true. You went to the restroom and came back and I had to update you on what had happened while you were gone, which is they discovered like the whole fairy race living in exile in a single cave. Maleficent is not the only fairy. There are so many like her. Or the fairy of her kind. There

are a lot of different fairies. I have to be honest. I didn't really understand the genus of the different genuses of fairies in this movie, which maybe was the point. Maybe all fairies are the same. Maybe we're all the same. It's a confounding biological text, I would say, just in general. I don't understand what separates all of these different creatures. Here's what Maleficent, Mistress of Evil is theoretically about. A formidable queen causes a rift between Maleficent and Princess Aurora, who is played by who? Michelle Pfeiffer. No. Oh, Aurora. Aurora is played by Elle Fanning. Oh, I thought you were talking about the queen. No, the queen is played by Michelle Pfeiffer. No. Oh, Aurora. Aurora is played by Elle Fanning. Oh, I thought you were talking about the queen. No, the queen is played by Michelle Pfeiffer. Together they must face new allies and enemies in a bid to protect the magical lands, which they share. That's sort of what the

movie is about. It's funny that this was a Sleeping Beauty story that has now become, I guess, an opportunity for Elle Fanning to get married to some bro, some prince bro. Yeah. And in order to do that, there needs to be a sort of guess who's coming to dinner style scene in which Maleficent, who is her godmother, has to meet the king and the queen of this other kingdom. Yeah. For the first 30 minutes of this movie, I was like, oh, this is about in-laws and evil in-laws.

And I was kind of like, okay, you know, even young children who are interested in fairies should learn that family dynamics can be complicated and that we all need to accept each other around the dinner table. And then it takes a turn. Yeah, it's actually much more red state versus blue state or America versus Mexico or something in that vein, because it very quickly becomes a story about what makes us different as opposed to what makes us the same. And I think that that's not an uncommon trope in a Disney movie, but it's very rarely so violently told, so aggressively told. I think Michelle Pfeiffer's character, I think Queen Ingrid is her name,

is a real authoritarian, Trump-like backstabbing figure in the movie. And I don't think we're spoiling anything by saying that. And it's just a very odd text. And it's interesting that Angelina Jolie would participate in a text like this because she finds herself at this odd crossroads of her career. She, like most aging movie stars, I think, realizes that IP is a pathway to relevance, to continued relevance. And, you know, in her way, she's kind of great in the movie. No one is more expressive and sort of interesting to look at than Angelina Jolie. They don't let her do anything. It looks like she maybe only had like 10 or 12 days on set.

Yes. She's not in the movie as much as you would want her to be in a movie called Maleficent. Yes. Why do you think that is? I assume because she agreed to do a sequel for a large amount of money with very limited work time. This is the first movie that she has been in since 2016.

Are you aware of that? And even that was Kung Fu Panda, where it was her voice. I was astonished when I looked at this. But she basically doesn't act anymore. Why is it? Is it because she's raising a family? I think so. I mean, she was directing.

Producing more? She was directing. She made a film for Netflix. And I do think also, in the same way we've talked about Brad Pitt's kind of turbulent couple of years, she was the other half of that. And I suppose has just been spending time with family

and directing and doing her charity work. I think also if there's not a lot for her to do, if this is what's on offer, I kind of understand why she's not working as much. It's a bit of a depressing state of affairs, not just for her, but for a lot of people. This is a real, in the parlance of Jalen Rose, a keep getting them checks all-star team because there are a lot of really talented people in this movie, many of which are Oscar nominated. Just slumming it. Just slumming it big time.

Let's go through a couple of these people. Phantom Thread star and Oscar nominee Leslie Manville who plays a fairy, a tiny fairy, who I think is sort of animated. It's like the animated incarnation of Leslie Manville floating through the air. Right, it's like the animated incarnation of leslie manville floating through the air right it looked like they put the face on an animated fairy she is

joined by two other fairies also two very talented actors juno temple a woman that i am in love with and amelda staunton also an oscar nominee uh these three women like have very little to do in this movie and that this is a paycheck role of all time yes i i kind of don't know why you need leslie manville for this part that was the moment in their credits when i turned to you and was like what's happening because i was not aware leslie manville was in this movie until we got there and then i when she showed up as the tiny animated fairy who i kind of recognized from the original sleeping beauty because those are the three fairies who like take care of Aurora or whatever. Oh, dear.

What are we doing here? It's very strange. Also in this movie, Ed Screen, who you may recall as the original Dario on Game of Thrones and also a guy who is frequently cast as an evil villain in films, appears here as a giant fairy named Bora. Sure. Another fairy, also an Oscar nominee, Chiwetel Ejiofor, who plays a character called Connell. I don't know. What is happening? Why is Chiwetel Ejiofor in this movie? It's for money.

Good for him. He deserves it. Also in this movie is Sam Riley, who people may remember as the star of the movie Control about Joy Division. Oh, yeah. Wonderful actor, hamming it up. We mentioned Michelle Pfeiffer.

We mentioned Elle Fanning and Angelina Jolie. Warwick Davis, the beloved Willow, once again playing a little person slash creature. Trapped in a basement. This is a really, really weird cast of people. I guess everyone just wants a piece of the Disney, the paycheck. They're just handing out money. And why would you say no? I guess I would you play a fairy in a movie like this? If they were like, I want to take Amanda's head, shrink it down and put it on a fairy body. The one thing I did wonder about with Leslie Manville in particular is it's definitely a

paycheck. They're barely in the movie, but it does seem like they had to do some of the face technology, which involves like having dots on your face. And there's a lot of technological logistics and annoying stuff that you'd have to do. It's not like you just show up for two days is my understanding of how this would work. Now, maybe they have simplified the process and they can really just take a picture of her face and the rest happens on computers. I am not an expert on this. But no, I don't want them putting dots on my face. I don't have patience.

This is a call to all digital artists out there. Right now, if you will make this technology available, Amanda and I will submit ourselves to having dots on our face to be digitally integrated with a small fairy. I will do it. It probably only costs somewhere between $5 and $12 million to do this, which is why these movies look simultaneously so good and so bad. You know, speaking of, it's kind of a CGI porn fest, the whole movie. It never looks like you're in a real place. It always looks like you're either on a set or on a green screen created atmosphere. These Disney movies are insane. This is insane. We talked about Aladdin and the Lion King this year, both of which I walked away from being like, we're in the Matrix.

This one may be even more so. I just don't know who this is for. You and I went to a screening and there were some small children there. And within 10 minutes, I was like, are these small kids okay? Because this is very dark and pretty violent and it's about evil fairies. There's very little kind of like frolicking and butterflies and other stuff that I would assume kids would respond to. I mean, every parent you've talked to is like, oh, my kid really liked Frozen except for all the scary stuff. This is like 50 times scarier than Frozen.

In a lot of ways, they're kind of ripping off Game of Thrones throughout this movie. Very much. I mean, there is a scene where, hit the 30 second button if you don't want Maleficent too spoiled for you, okay? Hit it right now.

Okay. There is a scene in which Angelina Jolie comes back to life as a dragon. Yes. And then they do, I mean, they steal the actual shot of... I believe she's a phoenix. Whatever. She looks just like a dragon. But it's like a dragon bird.

It is the shot of... And Elle Fanning is the Daenerys character. And she is standing in front of Angelina Jolie as a, quote, phoenix, aka dragon, which, like, she's brought, like, honestly, she makes her into a, quote, phoenix by crying over her ashes. It's honestly, they recreated the whole sequence. Yeah, the narrative logic of this film is a bit confounding. But there is also just, you know, people poiling vats of CGI oil over the turrets. I don't even know

my castle names, but whatever. It does look like they thought, okay, you know what's really popular right now? Game of Thrones

and arguing about personal identity and 2019 and we're just gonna make a movie about those two things. With fairies. Do children care? I don't know. I mean, do you think that when you look back at, and I know we're just gonna make a movie about those two things with fairies do children care

i don't know i mean do you think that when you look back at and i know you're not a big animated movie person but the kids movies do you look at them through a different lens and try to understand their themes a little bit more coherently as an adult like if you look back i talk about the wizard of oz on the show a lot we've talked about it recently with judy garland the wizard of oz is about a lot of big things yeah you know that novel is about a lot of big ideas about what we have and don't have, but what we want, what we aspire to, what keeps us down, what lets us rise up. Right. Sophisticated movie in many ways, even though it's about munchkins and evil witches.

Right. I think you could make the case that these movies are trying to do a similar thing. They're trying to put lessons in the margins of the big pop entertainment. Yes. And that's always been the case. I think we talked a lot about the original Mary Poppins last year when the new Mary Poppins came out and I went back and watched it. An insane movie and is about the banking system in London in 1960s, which I definitely did not remember because I was a child and I skipped past that. But the thing about Mary Poppins is that it also has candy. It also has goofy musical

numbers and supercalifragilisticexpialidocious and energy and things that I as a three-year-old responded to while then being taught about the banking system. And I don't know what candy this movie had. This went straight for the weird politics and the violence. It's funny that you mentioned the banking system. I feel like you've created an elegant bridge to our conversation about The Laundromat, which is a movie that has literally nothing in common

with Maleficent, Mistress of Evil, except for the fact that it is about a bigger idea and it's not afraid to kind of communicate what it's about. However, it's also not afraid to be entertaining. So here's what the laundromat is about.

When her idyllic vacation takes an unthinkable turn, a woman named Ellen Martin begins investigating a fake insurance policy. She slowly begins to unravel an international conspiracy of fraud and political destruction.

As I mentioned earlier, this is a movie about the Panama Papers told in episodic fashion. It's almost an anthology of stories using three characters as the center of the story. Ellen Martin is played by Meryl Streep. Delightful Meryl Streep bucket hat performance.

Can't say enough about her. It's also about two lawyers who work to organize this grand international conspiracy played by Gary Oldman and Antonio Banderas having the time of their lives. Incredible stuff. They're absolutely wonderful. And I'm fascinated by this movie for two reasons. One, I think you and I just generally had a blast watching it.

We loved it. And we walked out and turned to each other and we were like, what's wrong with everybody else? It's pretty instant. And that's the other thing is this movie premiered at a couple of film festivals this fall and got sort of roundly negative reviews. At best middling reviews,

I saw very few people that came out in support of the movie. And I wonder why that is because I feel like the whole point of this podcast is to talk about how the movies are trying to communicate some of the frustrations or some of the complex ideas in our political and social state right now and this is a movie that is taking it head on but trying to do so in an entertaining fashion and I think there are some times when it's a little on the nose I

would say the ending is pretty on the nose sure but it didn't bother me and I felt like it was simultaneously achieving its stated goal while entertaining me. Yes. And it might be the only movie on this list that authentically did that in a clear way. Yes. In a lot of ways, this is a classic they knew movie, right? Where it's like someone has to uncover a corruption or a cover up by a large group of people over a span of time. And that person is Meryl Streep. And we've seen a lot of those movies from Spotlight to, I guess, in certain... I mean, The Informant is another play on that idea. Same filmmaker, same screenwriter.

Exactly. But because it's Steven Soderbergh, it can't be that rewarding. Mark Ruffalo screaming. They knew speech. He's playing with the genre and playing with the ideas. And so there's less. To me, it's really entertaining and thoughtful. And you ask a lot of questions, again, about the banking system and governments and international finance, but it is also fun to watch. But except for the end, there's not really any moral. It's pretty nihilistic. It's kind of like, wow, we're really screwed. And I think people are resistant to that. People still want to have the lesson spelled out for them and to kind of have the movie help them feel better and to feel better about their own morals and what they believe. It's like virtue signaling, for lack of a better word. And I just kind of feel The Laundromat is too much like, well, this is how it is. Good luck. In some ways, you're right. And I think that that's insightful. But I felt like the movie that this has the most in common with,

whether you like it or not, is, well, there are two films. Let me preface it by saying, Steven Soderbergh has been on the record about saying that Damien Sistefran's Wild Tales is the movie that he used as a sort of structural inspiration, which is these largely unrelated parables kind of strung together to tell us something bigger about the world.

But the movie, it reminds me of, from a pop perspective, is The Big Short. Of course. And The Big Short is told similarly. It's got this kind of

dangling series of threads that we're trying to stitch together, all connecting people to one big problem that we have in this country. And it ends sort of satisfyingly, and then it ends with, like, a doomy grace note at the end, you know, that note about Michael

Burry and the water. And that is a kind of a nihilistic movie. And I think Adam McKay's political fables are also quite nihilistic regardless of how you feel about them because I think it's not unreasonable to be completely cynical about all this stuff. And the reason that a movie like Maleficent, Mistress of

Evil, which spoiler alert, ends happily because it's a Disney movie, feels like really inauthentic and weird. Totally. But I would say Vice is also a pretty nihilistic take. That's also, that's Adam McKay's more recent biopic, sort of, of Dick Cheney and does not end happily. But I relate to that. I relate to like, guess what? We're fucked. But I relate to that. I relate to like, guess what? We're fucked.

But you know what? Vice was nominated for Oscars. And I think that's because if you have like Dick Cheney in the logline of your movie at this time in America, people will take it seriously because politics

are the only things that get ratings. But it still was not received as rapturously as The Big Short. And people don't think, a lot of people were like, what is this? And that's because I think in a lot of ways

it doesn't take a strong enough stand like against Dick Cheney or for something, right? I think that's right. I think you've located the trickiness with that movie and we had a basically

like a backlash conversation to that movie immediately after it came out and I feel like we're having a similar one about this movie because of the had a basically like a backlash conversation to that movie immediately after it came out. And I feel like we're having a similar one about this movie because of the same thing that you've identified, which is that it doesn't make people feel better. It makes them feel worse. And what role a piece of art like this has

to resolve some of our feelings is an interesting question. I think it was like sincerely related to the Joker question, which ends very similarly nihilistically is an interesting question. I think it was, it was, it was like sincerely related to the Joker question, which ends very similarly nihilistically and maybe was a bit more cynical in its execution, but I think is kind of seeking the same feeling.

But for some reason, that movie is also a runaway train hit. Yeah, I think the thing is that Joker, the character is, is nihilistic

and that movie thinks it's nihilistic, but it's actually trying to assign blame to everything at once and it is ultimate it isn't ultimately like well we're fucked there's nothing we can do about the problem is it's like mental illness is the problem and the rich people are also the problem and also liberals in the street are the problem and have you considered that if you fucked Joaquin Phoenix everything might be better it is like i had to i'm sorry but it is i think part of my problem with joker is that it has too many beliefs and it's like it's confused and trying to spread the

blame everywhere instead of that what are you gonna do yeah but i think you could also walk away from the laundromat and this is not a spoiler yeah and also i would highly recommend recommend Secrecy World, the Jake Bernstein book that this movie is sort of based on. Because it's a much deeper and more sophisticated analysis of the Panama Papers story, which is difficult to explain and understand. But you can't walk away from this movie and think it's okay to defraud people out of their life savings. No. We know in our very being, in our heart, that that is evil and wrong and that all of the things that are done to the people who are characterized in this movie and Meryl Streep's character is a composite, but she represents so many people who lost their life savings

because of these crooks. We know that that's, we should fight that. That's, it doesn't need to be explained to us that we should fight that. We do, but I do think there's also, you're not allowed to enjoy yourself in movies like this, where if you're learning less about society, then it needs to, you have to pay some sort of penance of watching. And the idea that the laundromat is fun

and that Gary Oldman and Antonio Rodriguez are having like a nice time and they get all the laugh lines maybe doesn't really seem as punitive as it should be. Quote, again, this is not my belief. I really love this, but it does seem like people draw a line between I'm here to have fun and I'm here to say something about the state of America or the world in 2019 and

aren't willing to combine the two. I think we need to see the movie, though, on the continuum of Steven Soderbergh movies, because he already did the thing that you just described. He already made Traffic. He already made Aaron Brockovich. He made movies that were overtly political, that had something very clear to say about those issues, that also used kind of genre and style and the Soderberghian style of filmmaking to tell those stories. And it's really more with movies like The Informant when he clearly is like, I'm in full experimentation mode where telling the tale is meaningful to me,

but making sure that I'm creating something new and original and entertaining is also really important to me. Even with High Flying Bird, which we saw earlier this year, that is a movie just overwhelmed with ideas. And the Terrell McCraney script is all about personal empowerment, and it's a perfect 2019 NBA movie in so many ways and it's about streaming culture and who owns the rights to intellectual property. Like it has a ton of ideas in it, but it's still entertaining and there's nothing wrong with that.

I want to be super clear that being entertaining is the only thing that I am looking for at the movies. And you and I are just, we're not even in the tank for Soderbergh. We're not taking money from him. We're just huge Soderbergh fans. And I do think that a lot of people either take his work for granted or don't respond to that, the lively mind in the way that you and I do and are looking for different things. But I agree with you.

I want to have a good time. In some ways, it makes me feel worse about the conclusion where I'm like, well, I really enjoyed that. And because I'm just, we're planned as the Titanic goes down, I guess. I think a big part of it is just that he was gone for a while and now he's fully back making feature films on a regular basis at a big clip. And he makes it look too easy. I love that. He just makes it look too easy. All I want in life is for everyone to make stuff look easy.

I don't want to see the effort. I agree with you, but it's four movies in three years, all of which I think are interesting, Unseen probably the least successful of the four. But even that is shot on a fucking iPhone, and it's a gripping thriller. And you're right, we're taking him for granted. How do we talk about the next film?

Oh, I wish I had a gif of your face just then. You know, ever since we heard about Jojo Rabbit winning the audience award at Toronto, we knew that it was going to be a tricky conversation. I have interviewed Taika Waititi on this show. I'm a big admirer of his. I'm a big admirer of him as a writer, as a maker of both personal films and big top entertainments. You know that he is kind of a central, like a triangle figure for me where it's like he made a great Marvel movie and he made a great little film and he made a cool TV show. Like he does all of the things that I think interest me particularly. This movie, Jojo Rabbit, is a complicated passion project for him.

And it's coming at a time after trying to make it for 10 plus years where it feels like the timing is perfect, but also all wrong. And I'm going to describe the plot of the film very quickly and then we can discuss maybe what works and does not work about this movie, okay? Yes. Here's the synopsis.

Jojo is a lonely German boy who discovers that his single mother is hiding a Jewish girl in their attic. Aided only by his imaginary whose imaginary friend is Hitler, and he is in close consort but also frustrated emotionally and maybe even romantically by an Anne Frank-esque figure hiding in their house. Yes. That's a lot. That's a lot. It is. It's a lot. I don't think that this movie totally worked for you. It's, this is the thing, it's a lot and it's also not a lot. Part of the reason this movie is a satire, it has been branded as an anti-hate satire, which is just the marketing department both deserves a raise for that and also a permanent

vacation. But in a lot of ways, that's an encapsulation of where we are with movies and with America and with this podcast that we're having right now. So it is a satire that I think the conversation around it has been like, how daring. And Taika Waititi plays Hitler and he plays him for mega laughs. And he is a charming, a lot of the comic relief is Taika Waititi in a Hitler costume, which not something I would do, probably not something you would do. So in a way that is daring, at the same time, this is sort of the safest satire subject that you can possibly pick. I think probably Nazis and World War II are the only thing left at the entire world, minus some Holocaust deniers, which we're not talking about

those people you got kicked off you got kicked off facebook which is impossible to do so good luck to you but it's really the only just pure evil we're all agreed there's a good guy and a bad guy and so the stakes in this movie while being about some of like the worst events in modern history are also pretty low because you know who's good and who's bad. And we're not really learning anything new. Yeah, it's entertaining at times. I think some of the comedy works better than some of the drama. I 100% disagree.

Really? Yeah. You think it's better as a dramatic movie? Yeah. I think, listen, there's an adorable kid at the center of this. And he's very cute. And I think he's very good. And I think his emotional moments with the Anne Frank figure, and to an extent with Scarlett

Johansson, which I'm surprising myself by saying that, are very moving. And it's sweet. I think a lot of people, well, not a lot of people, because not that many people have seen this, but some people have complained that he's borrowing from Wes Anderson a lot in this movie. But it is those sort of wistful Wes Anderson-y childlike moments that worked for me a bit more. Also, the sidekick kid, Jojo Rabbit, has a best friend who is my favorite person in this movie. He's very adorable. The protagonist in the movie is played by an actor named

Roman Griffin Davis. And the girl hiding in their attic is played by Thomasin McKenzie, who was in the film Leave No Trace last year, which is one of the best movies of that year. She's also a tremendous actor. I think it's more just that

when Tyke is on screen, even though he's doing a, you know, what could be said, like really unfortunate character choice, which is making Hitler kind of charming in a weird way. Tyke is just funny. He's just entertaining to me. I think his character, his Adolf Hitler character kind of loses steam as the movie goes on. But I think that's dramatic choice as this kid is evolving. But when we first meet him in the movie, and then we meet this Sam Rockwell character who's a kind of drunken Nazi leader

doing kind of an update on his Three Billboards character. It's kind of unfortunate that like a lot of the performers in the movie, all of whom I think are pretty undeniably talented, but Scarlett Johansson has had her fair share of complex interviews and conversations about the world

in the last couple of years. Sam Rockwell, who's no doubt one of the most talented actors of his generation, continues to pick parts that make people wonder why he keeps playing

the worst people in the universe. Yeah. And maybe some of that is typecasting. Maybe some of that is the challenge of taking on a role like that

and making that person appealing. It's a little bit hard to say. It's tricky. It's really tricky because Taika wants to make an entertaining movie. He made Ragnarok. He made What We Do in the Shadows. So I think that that is a key aspect. And we were just having this conversation about the laundromat. It's like Soderbergh wants to entertain. But World War II comedies have already been done and done about as well as any subgenre as could ever be done. In 1940, before the United States was in World War II, Charlie Chaplin did The Great Dictator.

During World War II, we got To Be or Not To Be, Ernst Lubitsch's film. That was while the war was happening. And those are two of the greatest comedies of that time. And then it goes on. You know, we get Billy Wilder looks at World War II and Stalag 17, not exactly a comedy, but a kind of like a comic portrayal of a lot of the complications of this. And it goes on and on. Steven Spielberg makes a really bad World War II comedy called 1941. There's dozens of movies about this. Yeah. An important aspect of a lot of those movies is that the comedy is at the expense of Nazis.

And the real tough part for me, for Jojo Rabbit, was about 20 to 30 percent of the jokes were not at the expense of Nazis, but they were just really cruel things said about Jewish people. Yeah. And it's a satire. And we all know that everything they're saying is like wildly anti-Semitic. And I think the conceit of the script is that you're supposed to laugh at like, oh my God, I can't believe these horrible, ridiculous, antisemitic things these people are saying. But it is also people laughing at truly heinous remarks. And I was sitting in a theater where, you know, the 20th minute of people just laughing at these jokes, that's not what they're laughing at but

i was uncomfortable yeah it it's hard to not because my desire is not to cancel a movie like jojo rabbit i think that would be pointless and there are things about it to recommend and i you know there's one funny joke that is at the expense of the nazis that i have been you know making to you in private because you can't yell metal for Hitler like in public that's a tough look but it's a it's a very funny bit so it is possible to do that and the movie does that at times and I just think when it's leaning into the other part of the satire it's it didn't work for me how about that the reason the movie I think has been shotgunned into the consciousness even though very few people have seen it and it's not opening wide this weekend. So a lot of people aren't going to be able to see it

is because it won that award in Toronto and Green Book won that award last year. And Three Billboards won the year before that. Three Billboards won the year before that. And it feels like the kind of movie that's going to get picked over in a big way. And I think Taika has a lot of supporters, a lot of fans. He's a very charismatic guy. He's a very smart guy. And do you think that this is going to take the same, I don't know, trajectory that Green Book or Three Billboards took? Do you think it's going to

be hitting in major categories and that we're going to be hearing about it for the next four months or talking about it for that matter? I have no idea. Yeah, me, I don't either. I don't have a feel for this. Because there is a simplistic ah, these are adorable kids. And it teaches us not to hate reading that I kind of think is what propelled it in Toronto. And, you know, there are parts of it that are actually very affecting in that way.

So I don't mean to totally dismiss it. I did find the emotional stuff worked more for me than the comedy. There is also, it is stated as a satire, but this is a pretty black and white issue where there are just like a lot of fateful things said in this movie. And on the internet, you can take it all out of context. And I honestly don't know where four months of that discourse, which much of which will not be fair to the movie which I'm not a huge fan of as everyone can tell but I have no idea what that does for Oscar chances

I just don't know how it mutates well it has the possibility to just have that slingshot effect of we're going to get a lot of press about why this movie is problematic and then we're going to get a lot of press from other people who are like here's why it's not problematic

and we're trying to get ahead of the narrative curve in some respects by having a conversation like this as clearly as we can. I'm not outraged by Jojo Rabbit. I'm also not like absolutely delighted by it. It's just, it fits somewhere right in the middle. You know, there's a lot of things about it that didn't work for me either, just as you're saying. But it's a Fox Searchlight film with movie stars and an Oscar winners.

And it's got it's a World War Two movie and it's got the sheen of respectability. Yes. So that means it's probably going to be at least in the conversation for a while. I think so. Buckle up for so many. What can comedians can say and not say conversations? I mean, that stuff that's going to be going for three months. It's like pissing in a hurricane. It's just dangerous stuff. I know. I'm going to talk briefly about three months it's like pissing in a hurricane it's just dangerous

stuff i know uh i'm going to talk briefly about zombie land double tap okay here's the here's the plot synopsis before we talk to reuben fleischer a little later in the show 10 years later zombie slayers tallahassee columbus wichita and little rock square off against the newly evolved undead so zombie land seen through a certain prism made made in 2008, released in 2009, right into the Obama presidency, is maybe a Tea Party movie. It is maybe a movie about the vicious undead and those of us just trying to survive. Yeah. The measure of decency and shotguns. Sure.

Maybe it's seen the other way around. Maybe the zombies are the people who desperately need help and need to be fed. And maybe the killers are hateful and protecting their guns. Yeah. Maybe that's overthinking it. Maybe it's just a great zombie comedy, which is largely what I think it is. This new movie, I think it's a lot easier to situate it in this conversation that we're having, in part because of the way that the characters are named,

which is by their cities and by the states that they come from. And that is how people identify each other. They don't talk. They don't say, hey, Steve. They say, hey, Tallahassee. Okay. Because that defines where you are and where you came from and what you represent. And even though it's just a dumb zombie comedy, it weirdly also has a lot to say about the world.

I mean, that's not surprising, right? All horror movies and sci-fi. And what does zombie fit under what genre i think it's largely horror okay all have political over the first zombie movie george romero's night of the living dead is one of the great allegories of in film history of course and it's not unreasonable to look at it that way even though it features woody harrelson as like a shit-kicking zombie killing badassainly, like this movie worked. I don't, did the world need another Zombieland movie?

No, but it's a movie with Jesse Eisenberg and Emma Stone and Woody Harrelson and then a bunch of other fun cameos, just like the first film had with Bill Murray. And it's nice to have a movie that even though we have wedged it into this conversation, you could just go to and be like, that was cool. And then walk out and then not have to deal with it anymore. Yes. Like it was cool to have a cool movie.

Fewer and fewer of those movies are made. Exactly. So I wanted to at least situate it in this, of these four, do any of these movies like actually matter? I know that we could say, well, nothing that happens on MSNBC or CNN every night matters either if you want it to get truly nihilistic. But in the context of a high stakes world in which we just came out of a democratic debate, we're engaged in all this impeachment conversation at all times. There's obviously horrible things happening in the world in Syria and Turkey. Has any of this stuff like really rise to the level of meaningfulness? Do you mean in terms of will it change anything or is it worth-

Yeah, will it make people see the world differently? Will it help us understand something we didn't understand before? Well, no, because nothing helps anyone understand what the people only understand what they want to understand and see what they want to see, whether it be in the news or in art or in pop culture. And I think you and I are probably both guilty of that, too. So that's not I'm not trying to dismiss anyone. So, no, I think. In a lot of ways, they're all things that we have seen before you know Maleficent is bizarre and I have never seen sexy fairies quite like that though I'm told there's just a whole selection of those on the CW at any given moment I'm sure there's like a whole I thought you were

gonna say on the dark web it's probably a whole whole sub-genre. I think in the YA, for sure, there's a whole sexy fairy situation. I'm talking about Pornhub here. I think it can get really dark really fast. That was essentially what was happening in Maleficent 2. I was like, there are children here. But in the idea that a large blockbuster is sort of ineffectually grappling with real life issues and trying to translate them to children. That's not particularly new, is it? No, it's not. You know, and I think the laundromat is Soderbergh flexing style wise. But like I said, it's

someone chasing down some documents and it turns out there was a conspiracy. And the only way to prevent against those conspiracies in the future is to hold institution accountable, which is what it ends. We've been making those movies for forever. I love those movies. I don't mean to dismiss them. I do too. Jojo Rabbit is a satire about Nazis.

You said yourself, we've been making these for 80 years. Had to do the math there. Thank you. And then zombie movies have been allegories since they were existed, since they were invented. So do they will they change anyone's mind? No. Will they reinforce things that people want to see or believe? Probably. Will reinforcing those beliefs make people money to varying degrees? Yes. I think that's the cable news strategy, right? So in a lot of ways, this is just copying and not to bring it back to Donald

Trump, but to bring it back to Donald Trump. In a lot of ways, it's just ratings and it's just who can get attention and who can verify people's own beliefs about themselves. Okay. So this is a segue into a broader conversation I want to have about this, the role that movies play. Because if these individual movies don't kind of quote unquote matter, won't change the way people feel about the world or understand things,

that they're just variations on a theme, then has our popular culture changed? And has this actually become the homogenous normal where everything is sort of about this? And even the most commercial products that we encounter, which is a Disney sequel. There can be no more commercial product in the universe than a Disney sequel. Is there a, for utter lack of a better phrase, a wokening that has happened here? Where even in the Maleficent movie.

I'll cite something that I thought was interesting. I was, I was reading Richard Lawson's review of the, of this film in vanity fair. And in the review, Lawson cited the YouTuber, Lindsay Ellis, and what she calls quote unquote,

woke Disney. And, and Lawson writes Ellis explicates what she sees as an unseemly trend. Companies taking cues from social justice discourse to tweak their vintage wares, hemming and darting them into more culturally acceptable products without any real thoughtfulness put towards the issues they're paying lip service to, to the wrongs they're trying to redress. I thought that was an interesting thing, and I have watched some of Lindsay Ellis's videos, and she has a kind of almost like knowingly smarmy approach to the like, oh God, look at how Disney is like

bending over backwards to make Aladdin seem way more woke than it really actually is because Disney. And it reminds me a little bit of the discourse that I was experiencing when I was in college and learning about the mass media and journalism. And every deeply enlightened professor who lived in upstate New York and didn't have a job was like, CBS News is owned by a corporation. And what corporations care about is the bottom dollar. So everybody who is a journalist at this company is complicit in this grand design. And then they would feed you a Robert McChesney book or a Noam Chomsky book. And they would be like, it's time for you to be radicalized and to be a part of independent media. I had a lot of professors like that.

And this is a slightly snarkier iteration of that. Right. But it's an indication that maybe we shouldn't seek popular entertainment to help us better understand our world, which I think is a complex and interesting idea. Yes. So I have not watched her videos. I just read what Richard Lawson shared in his review. And it's funny, when I read this, I imagined that her point of view was that these companies aren't doing enough, that these companies are putting on the cloak of caring about feminism or immigration or the politics of the day so far as it will appeal to an audience to get people to buy their products. But it sort of seems like she's coming, the way that you described her video is that that's not the case and she's criticizing the impulse to look for

those values from corporations and from our pop culture. I think it's column A and column B. Okay. I think it's like this is disingenuous that they're trying to seem like literally virtue signaling by making their movies sort of kind of about these things. But also that we shouldn't be looking to this for this stuff. Like I think it's fairly, it's smart stuff what she's trying to identify. And it's like I said, it is complex. I think you can say both of those things are true in this scenario i don't know how i feel about it i i

tend to think um authorial or corporate intent is ultimately not the most important thing when it comes to this sort of stuff and if you draw out a bigger idea from a piece of culture that you otherwise would not would not have occurred to you i that's valuable. I don't think you only have to read The Economist to get the truth about what's happening in the world. I was really inspired and informed about a lot of things by, I don't know, consuming Star Wars or reading horror fiction or watching Cheers. Like I remember thinking playing video games

was actually a fairly radical thing where not in the sort of gamer game moment, but as a kid in the 90s, I always felt like video games had this unique ability to make me more responsive to the world

and to think quicker. Now, maybe I'm just justifying all that time I spend playing video games, but what you get out of something isn't directly just the time spent. You know what I mean? Yeah, I would agree with that.

I think there's just also, practically speaking, what your professors were suggesting and kind of and what Lindsay Ellis is suggesting is essentially impossible just from what people have access to and capitalism and how people make money and can buy things and consume things. But to a larger extent, it's that philosophical idea where you're going to change things from within versus going to build your own thing on the side. And the problem with going to make your own movies that have no corporate backing and or don't engage with politics in any way is that no one's going to see it. That's exactly it.

And I don't know if a tree falls in the forest i does it make a sound not when it's a movie like not at all and so while i agree that a lot of this stuff is smarmy and fake and it's not even that it's fake it's just it's thin it's it's well the you said you don't want to worry about corporate like corporation intent which jesus christ i can't believe i said that and you know i don't really either except to say i don't think corporations are never doing something because they like have a personal belief corporations aren't people they are doing it because it's going to sell things.

That's literally the only reason that a corporation exists. Certainly one publicly traded. Yeah. So I do believe that's a good distinction. I do believe in being skeptical of that because it, but at the same time, if a movie makes me see something differently than if it was, I don't know. I mean, this is such a slippery slope. You know, everything is nuanced. You should probably think about where things come from. We could use the phrase everything is nuanced to end every segment. The thing that this reminds me a bit of was something that Chris was pointing

out when we were talking about Joker last week, which is that the idea of the Trojan horse being kind of feeling a little bit ugly or unseemly in the aspect of Joker and some of the issues that it's trying to deal with. But you pointed out yourself the idea that zombie movies are always a metaphor for something else in our society. Many horror films, a lot of science fiction is like that. So none of this stuff is new, I think. And in Disney movies, historically, there's a lot of messages quote unquote messages even if those messages are be good to your neighbor or something to that effect this time it just feels like is this an accidental bleeding of our discourse into the stuff that we make or is there a lot of purposeful decision making happening we can't ultimately know

until we talk to i don't know know, Joachim Ronning, who made Maleficent Mistress of Evil, and say, excuse me, sir, is this about the class war in America? Well, and his answer will be different from the however many people at Disney that worked on it and greenlit it and put it through there.

Everyone has a different checklist. So the idea of a, the only thing about the idea of a Trojan horse is that art has been funded by wealthy people and has been a way to smuggle in ideas and provocations and new forms since the beginning of time. So it feels really crucial, right? It feels fraught right now and it has kind of infiltrated popular culture in a way that maybe we wouldn't have expected since the monoculture is basically dead this is

the new monoculture right that's that's what it is arguing about politics in whatever form it is whether it's on msnbc or in a movie is the new monoculture it's all that we share that's the smartest thing anybody has said on this podcast, and it is also the most deeply depressing. Well, I know. I'm a Soderbergh nihilist at the end of the day. God. Amanda, thank you for endeavoring to talk about all these things and not intoning the name of Donald Trump too frequently. I appreciate that. Did my best.

Please stick around. We're going to have a conversation now with Zombieland Double Tap filmmaker Ruben Fleischer, who also made a couple of other movies you may have heard of, like, I don't know, Venom. Delighted to be joined by Ruben Fleischer. Ruben, thanks for being here. I couldn't be more excited to be talking to you. Ruben, I'll bet everybody's asking you why and how you got another Zombieland movie across the board, but I have to ask you to start this conversation. I'm surprised and happy that there is a second one, but how did this happen? It is literally 10 years in the making.

Soon after the first one came out and had an unexpected success, the studio naturally wanted to pursue a sequel. And the writers, Paul and Rhett, Wernick and Reese, who had written the original, wrote a really funny draft that we all really liked, but it just kind of missed the mark a little bit. And in hindsight, I think the unexpected failure of that script was that it was the bad guys were fellow people, and it just changed the tone of the movie. Like it's easy to laugh and enjoy kind of the over the top violence and zombies and all that in Zombieland 1 and 2. But when it turned towards fellow people, it just it shifted the fun and the comedy of the movie. And so we kind of just put it on the shelf.

And then about five years ago, after I was kind of licking my wounds after Gangster Squad didn't perform quite as well as I would have liked it to, I was thinking about how fun it was making the first Zombieland and what an unexpected gift getting to work with that cast and creating that world and working with those writers was. So we set about trying to come up with a sequel at that point. Paul and Rhett were very busy with Deadpool 1 and 2. And so they were serving as executive producers. And we got this guy, Dave Callahan. He wrote the first draft, and it was terrific.

But over subsequent drafts, it kept getting better and better, but it didn't have the voice of the original quite perfectly nailed. So finally, once Deadpool 2 was done, Paul and Rhett were able to turn their attention towards our movie and wrote a killer draft that the cast all signed up for. And then it was just a question of finding time that they all had in a window to make the movie, which was actually just February of this year. We shot it only seven months ago or something like that. I have a lot of questions about that. Yeah, that was so much talking.

I apologize. There was a lot of good information. Did the success of Venom for you make it easier to do this movie or was all of that kind of in motion? They were completely separate. It was kind of getting very real, Zombieland, prior to Venom starting shooting shooting i think um i'm pretty sure that we're still working on drafts while we're in the midst of venom but i think the cast

had signed on and the draft was the retin paul draft was was done and and then it was just a matter of um yeah figuring out schedule but the crazy thing is that so venom came out we worked all the way up until its release like i think we finished the movie two weeks before it came out and then I had to promote it and stuff. Went away for a week with my family for vacation, came back, started prep the next day was we prepped for three days and sorry, three weeks in LA. And then, uh, I was in Atlanta again. I've spent 12 months of the last, I don't know, two years in Atlanta shooting movies. You must be very tired. I'm tired.

Yeah. I think I'm going to take a little breather after this one comes out. So Venom is an object of fascination and is quite beloved here at The Ringer. And I think it actually has a similar relationship to Zombieland. We do a podcast here called The Rewatchables where we rewatch old movies and talk about them. It has to be a certain kind of a movie to become a Rewatchables in the way that you define it as really amorphous. But I feel like Zombieland is one of the last movies that kind of got in under the wire as a kind of like cable classic or something you would stumble upon and just be

like, I'm so happy to be around this movie, around these characters. Did you sense that right away? Because it was not like a mega box office hit, though it did well. But did you know right away that, and certainly I think the cast even more so have found, is that the fans of the movie have a really deep connection to the movie. I mean, Woody's made 100 movies or something like that, and he says that's the movie that people always ask him about and always tell him how much it means to them, Jesse, the same way. Like, of all the movies he's been in,

people always say, I watched it with my dad, Jesse, the same way. Like of all the movies he's been in, people always say, I watched it with my dad or we watched it every Thanksgiving or it's become a bit of this just kind of family. I think because it is at its heart a family movie, it has that feeling like a guy, a stand-up comedian that I'm friends with told me like it was the only movie he and his father ever watched together. And it has that kind of resonance, I think think because of the family thematic of the movie. And so, um, that is what we tried to tap into with this sequel is, you know, just kind of maintaining that family feel.

And in this case, Little Rock played by Abigail Breslin she's like a typical you know teenager who just is sick of her parents and wants to get out of the house and so that's what drives the story in this version you know I think seen through a certain lens there's a take that the movie has kind of a political bent to it as well a kind of like us versus them thing in it do you guys see that in the movie when you're making it as well? No, not at all. And actually, I'm not even quite sure what you mean by that because I don't think I've heard it before. Well, so let's just say one, each character is identified by sort of the city or where they come from. And then also there's obviously a kind of a zombies versus living people aspect to it. And there are a lot of movies right now that seem to be kind of consumed by

portraying, whether it's like a class war or, you know, people who think one way versus people who think another way about things. Maybe I'm just a little bit poisoned by watching a lot of movies that are about that, but I couldn't help but even see some of this movie through that lens. Yeah. I think that zombies, you know, since their origin have always represented some existential threat. Like people say that originally with the romero movies that it was about the cold war um and over time i think zombies are representative of anxiety or something like that um so in in our movie i i think they're just heightened stakes that's how i always saw them is like you can have this,

because for me the closest reference point for Zombieland was National Lampoon's Vacation. So it was about like a family road trip, and the zombies escalated the circumstances and made everything have a little bit more stakes or gravitas, which I think only benefits the comedy. But at no point have I ever thought of the zombies as representative of anything. It's just a fun world to play in this post-apocalypse and to like imagine,

you know, if there's no one left, like, yeah, sure, you could go live in the White House or you could live in Graceland or wherever else it is. You know, you take advantage of just that wish fulfillment. There's a fun nod to The Walking Dead in the movie. Do you feel like, was it harder in any way to make a zombie movie in the aftermath of the kind of glut that came in the aftermath of your first movie? I think that there's two answers to that. One is, for us, it wasn't any harder. Or I should speak for myself. For me, it wasn't any harder because I honestly haven't seen much of what's come after Zombieland.

I was just excited to focus on what we all loved about the first one and try and just carry that forward without being too repetitive. So that's one answer. The second answer is that I feel like the glut of zombie content, if anything, has made it more broader, commercially appealing to a mainstream audience. Because I think at the time of Zombieland, zombies were kind of a sub-genre. You only went to see something like that if you know, zombies were the kind of a sub-genre. Like, you only want to see something like that if you really love zombies and you're kind of a horror person.

But with the success of Walking Dead, I feel like it's made them more acceptable. And people just don't sort of categorize it in the same way and are more open to it. So we'll see what happens this weekend at the box office. But my hope is that it'll have broadened the audience that would be willing to go see something called Zombieland. Did you see yourself as a person who would make horror movies when you were first coming up? I know it's not a strictly defined horror movie. No, I mean, in fact, I passed on it the first time I read it because I was like, I don't know anything about zombies. And that's why vacation is a reference point because I was always just a huge comedy nerd and grew up loving all those 80s comedies. The majority of my work prior to Zombieland, actually exclusively my work prior to Zombieland had been comedy.

So that was my way in. And I remember being on set, I was really pretty inexperienced to be directing a studio movie and saying to my DP, I've never shot an action sequence before. I've never shot anything with a gun in it. And he said, well, I don't think I've shot anything without a gun in it. Because he came from you know J.J. Abrams school of like alias and Cloverfield and other things and uh and so he you know I had a lot of help from people who could you know Tony Gardner and makeup um artists who's done huge like zombie type movies so I surrounded myself with people who really knew how to do stuff that I didn't. And my focus was more on the cast and the performances and the comedy. Have you felt like since these movies, it's expanded the kinds of movies that you want

to make? Because it's, I mean, the different films that you've chosen to work on are pretty diverse and in all kinds of different genres. Yeah, that was purposeful. Like, you know, and another reason perhaps why zombie land 2 didn't happen right away was because i was excited to try different things and uh kind of stretch my legs or spread my wing whatever mixed metaphor i can come up with um yeah i was just excited to try different things and and with 30 minutes or less it was a dark comedy i was a history major with a focus on 20th century so gangster squadster Squad was like a dream come true, getting to go to 1949 Los Angeles and work with a cast like that. And then Venom was probably closest to Zombieland just because I always saw it as like this kind of horror comedy superhero movie.

For me, the reference point for that movie was American Werewolf in London. And so that experience that Eddie goes through in that movie was not dissimilar from the lead character in that movie. And so those were my reference points. But I couldn't have been more happy to return to Zombieland just because I think it really is just my sweet spot. Just fun, funny, great actors, great performances. And I'm really proud of the casting of the original. And I think the casting of this one's really strong too. And Zoe Deutsch, I think is going to be a breakout star from this movie. She yeah she really uh kind of steals most

every scene she's in and for me you know that that if if i had any signature as a filmmaker i think if you look at the movies i've made um the casts of all of them are pretty remarkable um how why is that the case did you just say that luck is that something no i just don't compromise i. I think I won't do it unless I feel confident enough to have people that are really terrific at the center of them, and I'm willing to make or do whatever it takes to get those key elements. And Aziz's only starring role is 30 Minutes or Less. And Jesse and Nick Swartzen and Michael Peñar are as funny as anybody in that movie. And Gangster Squad is like as premium, you know, kind of action dramatic cast as you could hope to have. And then, you know, Hardy is one of the greatest actors working today. So to have him and Venom, those all, I would say that's like the signature of what I do is just making sure everyone's really great. I love discovering new talent, as was the case with Zoe in this movie. I think she really, I'm sure that she'll have lots of good things ahead of her.

Yeah, I feel like Emma and Jesse also really kind of became more well-known to mainstream audiences in part because of Zombieland. Yeah, it was Jesse's first ever studio movie maybe, or definitely starring role in a studio movie. And we fought really hard to get him. Woody was a huge help in casting him actually, originally. The studio, like some other people, and Woody and I kind of fell on our swords for him. And that was great to have Woody's support for that. And then then Emma yeah she she had a great role in Superbad but this I think was her first starring role maybe but yeah I mean both of them like I was saying to somebody the other day like uh when we shot the first Zombieland like literally no one knew who they were and I could walk down the street anywhere

and people had no idea um whereas that's not the same necessarily now. Is it difficult to get big stars to participate in, like your movies have a very kind of like hyper real, kind of cockeyed, sometimes really comic tone. And a lot of the actors that you work with are Academy Award nominated and are maybe considered very prestigious, but you're able to kind of get them to fit inside the worlds that you're building. Is that hard to do? I think at this point, hopefully people have a sense of what my taste is and what I'm focused on. And so in signing up, you would hope that they would be committing to something like that. But I don't know. I know that on the first movie, Woody tells a story that when he first saw the script for Zombieland, he called his agent and said, you know, has it really come to this? Like, I have to do zombie movies?

Like, is that where I'm at in my career? And then similar to me, the agent said, you know, just read it. Like, it's really good. And then I remember having to fly to New York to meet Woody at a vegan restaurant and convince him to try and do the movie. And he took a lot of big leap of faith because, you know, he would joke. He's like, I can't believe I like working with a guy who's only done a couple of Burger King commercials. Like, and that's really, you know, at that point, I'd just done a handful of low budget short films and a whole lot of music videos and commercials. Do you feel like at this stage, you have to find ways to creatively integrate

popular genre with the kinds of movies that you want to do? Because it's something you've done really well, but I wonder as like a studio filmmaker in 2019, do you have to look for a super saleable property to do the stuff you want to pull off? I think it helps for sure. I think that's just the reality of the marketplace right now, that it's harder for, you know, we've said during the course of promotion for this film, like if we'd approach the studio now, the movie called Zombieland, I don't know that we would have been able to get it made, even with this cast. Like, it just kind of falls between the track cracks i can certainly say that after having done a big tentpole like venom it's just a different thing and if you

look at the box office on that movie it seems like that's what audiences are excited about and it feels like the marketplace has um become a bit bifurcated where there's like the really, really big movies. And then there's the smaller independent movies. But everything between, I think it's tougher and tougher to get them made and for them to break through. I remember when the MIA's Goliath video came out. I was in New York at the time and it was a very, it was a phenomenon in clubs in New York. And I'm wondering if you could tell me a little bit about what kind of a filmmaker you thought you were going to be, what kind of films you thought you were going to make at that time and kind of how that shakes out with where you are

right now. It's really a great question. I came up under Miguel Arteta. That was my, like, I didn't go to film school. I moved out here to Los Angeles, not knowing exactly what I wanted to do. I had kind of like a vague ambition of being a television executive, although I didn't really know what that meant or what they do. And so I got a job at Dawson's Creek as a PA because I knew Mike White and he was working on the show. I knew him because he went to my college. And so I worked as a PA and then they went and made this movie called Chuck and Buck as soon as the second season of Dawson Creek was over. And I got a job being Mikel Arteta's assistant for 200 bucks a week and it was a $200,000 movie shot on HD video like old school mini DV style not modern and such a fascinating movie yeah and it was shot in 20 days super as

low budget as they get but for me that was great because I never went to film school and this was my first ever time on a set and and I was completely subsumed by it. Miguel was so generous and let me help out. I got to sit in in casting sessions. He'd be like, I really need a location. Can you help me? I'd go try and find a bathroom for somebody to shoot in or whatever. I was on set. I was the second camera assistant who clicks the board thing.

I did every job, and know, seven days a week. And I was so happy. And that was like when I really truly fell in love with it. And so my background was truly independent film with some really great independent filmmakers. And my taste was like Coen Brothers, you know, David O. Russell, Alexander Payne, 90s classic, Tarantino, independent film with some real hardcore 80s George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, John Landis roots. And so I think I always thought I'd go down that road of being an independent filmmaker.

But my shortcoming is that I'm not a great writer. And so many of the great filmmakers I reference write their own movies and then execute them. So as a non-writing director, I was a little bit more reliant on what material I could find. And I think it's harder, in fact, to make an indie film if you haven't written it than it is maybe to get hired or at that time get hired to direct a studio movie. And so, yeah, I just always loved comedy. I was making really comedic things, whether they were shorts or commercials or music videos. And so that's kind of the lane I just instinctually went down.

And that led to being able to make a studio comedy. But it's a great question. I mean, someday I hope I'll be able to do something a little bit more, I guess, I don't know, performance you mentioned, a couple of different directions as a filmmaker, you know, 30 minutes or less was a very dark kind of very dark comedy and gangster squad was a more dramatic action movie. I've realized what I'm best at is making really fun, crowd-pleasing, you know, funny movies with some action and some style. I'm proud of the style that I bring to the films I make. And that's kind of my sweet spot.

So something tells me I'll probably try and play to my strengths, at least for the next little while. Tell me about the style, because I think particularly the Zombieland movies, which had a kind of almost video game-influenced aesthetic with the kind of text on screen and a heavy use of slow-mo. How did you figure out that that movie had to look and feel a certain way? Because it feels like it's very much in relationship to the new one. I would say it was more influenced by music videos and commercials than video games because I'm not a big gamer, but I was obsessed with music videos.

I think there's so many cool... You have to make it visually really arresting. That's part of the job of a music video director. If you look at Spike and Gondry and some of the greats, that your first movie, I think you want to really kind of come out the gate guns blazing. And so I did everything I could to bring style to it. The opening sequence was shot with a camera called a Phantom, which I was lucky enough to have used for a commercial. But I'd be curious if someone can correct me, but I think that was the first time it was ever used in a feature. And it shoots up to 1,000 frames a second. And just when I read the script, I can't even remember how they described that opening sequence. But I just kind of conceived it like a music video for the first one where it was just like vignettes of the apocalypse telling the story of how the zombies took over and wanting to shoot it super stylized with that camera. So that's how

that happened. And then the rules were always in the script. And I just was excited to find a way to make them look distinctive. And I had seen a FedEx commercial where they had done that tracked in type where it looks like it's actually in the space as opposed to on top of it. And I remember that was like my reference point. I was like, I wanted to look like this FedEx commercial. I mean, Fincher had done it with the opening credits for Panic Room, but the scale was so extreme that it was a little different and they weren't as animated and active. It was more just like they were in the world of New York.

But I was really excited to have them be kind of almost a character in the film. And I was lucky enough to work with a guy named Ben Conrad, who at the time was at a company called Logan. And they did the credits and the rules and I think hit it out of the park. And then, yeah, I've always just been a fan of slow-mo. I think that scene in The Untouchables that De Palma did with the baby carriages to this day,

one of the most perfect action sequences. And it's all entirely slow-mo, but lots of great filmmakers have used slow-mo to pretty incredible results. And I'm definitely, you know, biting from them, but the, the finale of the,

the first Zombieland was almost all slow-mo as Columbus, like, you know, goes to try and save the girls. And I think we tried not to overdo it in this one, but the end of the double tap when Tallahassee's doing the buffalo jump is definitely all slow-mo as well. Was it hard to get the studio to understand some of those choices that you were making?

Do you have to clear those things before you start using them? No, we were so under the radar with the first movie. I think they didn't even know we were making the movie. Half the people at the studio, they, like, I remember the head of the studio saw the movie for the first time at our first preview, our only preview for that movie. And it did remarkably well. And she danced a jig and hugged me. But I swear to God, she may not have ever heard of the movie prior to that.

Well, actually, that's not true, because she hired me for the job. So she knew. She had definitely read the script and knew it existed. But I think because we were off in Atlanta, it was before dailies, I'm sure, were as easily to be viewed that far away. They kind of just left and we're really smart, you know, it was only a $20 million movie. So in the scheme of things, we were just kind of an afterthought, which was great because they just let us do what we did. And I think when they saw it, they're like, holy cow, wow, you guys

had no idea what you guys were up to. Did you feel you needed to top or match the Bill Murray aspect of the first film, which I feel like is such a beloved and well-remembered thing? Yeah, we definitely felt a lot of pressure. But where do you go from there? like if we tried to get anyone else it would it just wouldn't begin uh to you know just i don't know it was so singular that we kind of ended up just uh repeating ourselves which we also did with metallica and um you know still works though yeah but that i think that's the thing it's like they were defining components of the original and i think a lot of sequels just kind of do the same thing. And I feel guilty for doing the same thing. But in those two instances, you can't beat Metallica.

It just sets the tone perfectly. I'm so grateful that they let us license a song again for this one. And then with Bill Murray, I mean, it's just like he's the all-time greatest. And he was like a key to that film in a major way so it felt awesome to be able to figure out a way to include him again a second time are there some other genres that you want to try out i actually would really love to try a musical people always say that really that's funny yeah why well for me it's my music video background like it just it's really um something that has inspired a lot of music

videos and just i've seen lots of musicals and um now that i have kids we watch like some of the classic musicals and i really love them and i i think i think it would just be fun just because they are so visual and so fun so that would be one i mean i would be thrilled to do a um like a space like a star wars type movie i would be thrilled to do a, um, like a space, like a star Wars type movie. I mean, I'd be thrilled to do a star Wars movie, but like, uh, but anything like an outer space, I think would be pretty cool. Uh, just cause I loved, I'm not a huge sci-fi guy, but I just love star Wars a lot. So I think that'd be pretty fun. Um, and like I said, I, I I'd love to make an, a really small movie. There's a guy, a DP who I've been

working with since the very beginning of my music video career who I would love to have the opportunity to make a movie with, and that would probably have to be on a smaller scale. So I'd love to make a movie just so he and I could shoot a movie together. Is it weird when something that you originated becomes IP? As somebody who has worked with IP? Is that Zombieland? Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I think the writers deserve more credit for that than I do or probably legally have more claim to it. But for me, I'm just happy if people like something I made. So like, as far as like, you know, any other future installments or whatever, um, I hope I'll, um, if, if they exist, I hope I'll be able to be a part of them. What are you going to do next? I'm not chill. I, uh, like I said, I was like, uh, I I've been making a movie for the past two and a half years with like just a week or two off in that time. So I'm, I'm pretty tired. Uh, so I'm going to hang out with, I have two young kids and so I'm real happy to just not do a lot.

And then I have always done a lot of television work. I have several shows that I produce that are on TV right now. And I'm excited to do a pilot in the spring for our company. And then hopefully in that time be finding whatever, I don't have anything lined up. So hopefully finding whatever that next right step is, uh, as a filmmaker getting to make another movie again. I've been tasked with asking you a question about the bold type, which is also beloved here at the ringer. Um, how do you figure out what kind of TV projects to associate with?

And it seems like a vastly different kind of world than the film stuff. I feel like you're very well known for the film stuff, not as well known for the TV stuff, but you have a ton of shows that you've directed, executive produced, et cetera. So how do you make decisions in that realm? Yeah, I've been really lucky in that regard. And I think because TV shows inherently take so much less time than a movie. Like when you choose a movie, it's like at least a year, if not more of your life. I mean, this one's 10 years. So

it just, it is a lot of time, whereas a pilot you can do in two months. And so it's less of a commitment. And so if the show succeeds, you know succeeds and gets on the air, then you get to be a part of it. I'm very lucky with our TV company. I have a partner named Dave Burnett, who's an incredible producer. And the bold type is totally his baby. He met Joanna Coles, who the show's based upon. And when she was at Cosmo, he met her at a dinner. And that first night of meeting her, he said, I'm going to make

a TV show based on you. And so the development of that show, it actually took longer than just two months. We did a comedy version for NBC that didn't get picked up. And then we sold it again as a drama to NBC, which didn't get picked up. but Dave's so industrious that he had slipped it to a friend at Freeform, uh, as soon as they passed on our, our script and Freeform thought it would be perfect for them. And, uh, yeah. And, uh, we shot the pilot in Toronto and, uh, yeah, it's been great. And then we also have this new show Stumptown, uh, that just debuted on ABC, um, which they did kind of concurrently while I was doing Zombieland 2. Crazy. Ruben, we end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers,

what's the last great thing they've seen? Have you seen anything good lately? Yeah, there's a show on Netflix that I really love that I'm going to space on the name, but maybe you know it. I think it's People Know Nothing or People Do Nothing. It's a British show, mockumentary style, in the style of The Office or Parks and Rec, or the original British Office, actually probably the closest thing, where it feels like you're watching a documentary about these young pirate radio DJs

who are super into garage music in London. And it is one of the funniest things I've seen in so long. It's on Netflix. There's five seasons. I just discovered it, but apparently it's been around for a while. And it's truly funny. I'm not all the way through it, but I'm eager to keep watching. Great recommendation.

Ruben, thanks for doing this. I really appreciate it. Thank you to Ruben Fleischer and thank you, of course, to Amanda Dobbins. Please come back next week where The Big Picture will be celebrating its 200th episode with a mega mailbag. Me and Amanda, no holds barred. Any questions you have for us about movies, not about our personal lives are all welcome. See you then.