The Big Picture - ‘Wonka’ and the Timothee Chalamet Movie Star Playbook. Plus: Jonathan Glazer on ‘The Zone of Interest.’

Episode Date: December 15, 2023

Sean and Amanda are joined by Joanna Robinson to react to ‘Wonka’—what works, what doesn’t work, musicals in the 2020s, and whether a movie can subvert its early reputation as a meme (1:00). Then, Sean is joined by Jonathan Glazer and Johnnie Burn, the director and sound designer, respectively, of ‘The Zone of Interest’ (1:12:00). They discuss recreation in film, interpretive sound design, their other collaborations, and more. Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guests: Jonathan Glazer, Johnnie Burn, and Joanna Robinson Senior Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Learn more about the albums you love with Dissect, a music analysis podcast hosted by me, Cole Kushner, a lifelong musician. Each season of Dissect dives deep into one album, examining the music, lyrics, and meaning of one song per episode. We've covered albums by Kendrick Lamar, Tyler, the Creator, Frank Ocean, just to name a few, and our brand new season just launched All About Radiohead's 2007 masterpiece In Rainbows. Listen to Dissect on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, because a great art deserves more than a swipe. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express.

Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit Superstore.ca to get started. I'm Sean Fennessy. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about pure imagination. Later in this show, I'll be joined by the sound designer and sound mixer and the director of The Zone of Interest, Jonathan Glazer and Johnny Byrne. Very excited to have them on the show

to talk about one of the very best films of the year. And in the most whiplashy of double episodes. This is an insane pairing. We will now be joined, Amanda, by the great Joanna Robinson to talk about Wonka. I hope you stick around for my conversation about The Zone of Interest, an incredibly deep, thoughtful, bracing, in many ways terrifying film, adapting the novel from Martin Amis.

And this, in many ways, was also a very terrifying film for me, the film Wonka, starring Timothee Chalamet. Hi, Jo, how are you? Thank you for being here. Oh, I'm delighted to be here. I've just been enjoying all of your cryptic, ominous teases that you've given both Amanda and me over the last few days about the conversation we're about to have about Wonka. Well, you know, I mentioned this at the end of a recent episode, but many, many months ago, we reached out to you and we said, okay, it's a very hectic fall season. Oscars are coming. You're one of the great film watchers and interpreters. What do you want to talk about on the show? And in an instant, you're back Wonka.

Before we get into the movie, why did you do that? Was it just to shock you? No. I think at that point, I had already taken a very stubborn stance against the wave of hate for Wonka. I was prepared for Wonka to be bad if it was. And I agree that the trailers didn't necessarily do it any favors. And certainly when I first heard about it, I said a Timothee Chalamet musical Wonka.

I'm not sure that's anything I ever asked for or wanted. But the thing that really was hanging over all of this was the director, Paul King, who made the first two Paddington movies. And I remember everyone being very skeptical about Paddington. The first two Paddington movies are two of my favorite cinematic experiences. It absolutely works on me. And so in between the corners of the, of the trailers that everyone was sort of rightfully making fun of, I felt like I could see the Paddington vision there from, from Paul King. And indeed, I would say this movie is just like a shameless playing from the Paddington, uh, playbook sort of film, but that's why. And then if it was terrible, I also wanted to talk about it.

So I just wanted... I wanted to be part of Wonka mania. And then I was perfectly delighted that you were shocked and appalled and disgusted that I said I wanted to talk about Wonka. So that was great too. What was your pregame Wonka vibe? Were you excited about this movie?

Were you concerned about it? I think I was lightly dreading it, but I do remember the trailer or some of the footage I premiered at CinemaCon, I want to say. And so we had a lot of like very cynical industry and it was like, to Joe's point, a particular brand of like dumping on a thing

where I was like, I don't think this is going to be good, but also I don't really feel the need to participate in this in any way, shape, or form. Then I finally saw the trailer. It got a movie theater before a movie, like a human being. And I was like, oh, this is just a movie for children. That seems nice. Children deserve movies, too. So then I was just kind of like, okay, I got a lot of movies to see before the end of the year and I'll go see this one. Well, then let's talk about it. Joanna, I'll start with you.

Yeah. Are you happy that you're here and did you like Wonka? I'm delighted. I'm always delighted to be here. Never a bad time with the Big Picture Podcast. OK, first of all. Secondly um i'm delighted because i think your opinions are split uh the two of you not to spoil anything and i think that always makes for a more interesting discussion and i did like wanka i really uh i really enjoyed the first viewing and then i watched it again with some friends who had never seen Paddington and I enjoyed their reaction. And then I got to show them Paddington. And that was its own sort of experience.

So like there there is something that Paul King does that is you could call it if you want to emotional manipulation. But I don't know what it is, but he he absolutely like squeezes my heart every single time I watch one of his films in a way that I actually enjoy. So, I did enjoy Wonka. Okay, Amanda. What did you think of Wonka? So, after All of Us Strangers, this is the most that I've cried in a movie theater in 2023. I swear to God. Like, I don't know what else to say.

I have to be honest. I was, like, openly crying. I thought it was, like, charming and wonderful. Like, and that's, I was by myself in the afternoon. I had even texted Joanna because Joanna was, like, pretty open about her enthusiasm for Wonka on social media before I'd even seen it. And I was like, what kind of trouble am I in for here? And she, to her credit, was like, I don't know. And then I went by myself. I teared up one point early on. And at the end, I don't want to spoil it. Like at this point, we could talk about it

later. But I was like, I'm like going to start ugly crying and like other people are looking at me. And I am aware of the fact that I'm just like a child, like a childless person here at this screening. Is this like as a mother of a son thing? What's going on here? I think it's a little bit. I mean, sure. It's a little bit of the parent stuff. And there were like a lot of like five or six year olds at my screening and they were like very delighted.

And I did watch it thinking about oh like my son isn't quite old enough but like I could imagine it but no like not even it was like half the parent-kid stuff and then half movie nostalgia stuff and like a little bit of of chalamet and it just like all came together and I was just like oh you got me you know like you hit all the buttons in the right way and i don't know they were giving out like chocolate like they were giving out golden tickets as your ticket into the screening which was very charming and i had some so like also maybe i was just like hopped up on chocolate i don't i don't know i can only be honest i will you will you tell the story about talking to Zach about it afterwards? I went home.

Okay. So I went home. And it was like an afternoon screening. So and across town. So God bless my husband. He did like the whole evening of childcare. And I got home like right after and I just went to bed. And he was like, how was the movie?

And not in like a mean jud judgy you skipped out on parenting way I was just interested and I told him I thought it was wonderful and then I told him I started crying and I was trying to explain when I started crying why I started crying and I started crying again recapping it at home to to Zach so I don't know like why are you looking at me like this um it's not it's also like let me just say right now on the record I am not pregnant so it is not like a weird hormonal thing okay like I it is just I was moved Joanna did you cry during this film oh both times yeah at the exact end toward towards the end in like pretty significant ways and

Sean I think it's completely fine that your heart is made of stone and this movie didn't impact I haven't shared my opinion

yeah but we know what it is you think that it like loses all of like the weirdness of the original and remember when we made like complicated things

not just that but it's like it's not good guys this movie is not good like I I have an appreciation uh for the paddington movies i like the paddington movies i think paul king is going for something tonally that is original right he is trying to do kids entertainment that is appealing to adults that has a kind of verve and energy that is like is it like pixar and ernst lubitsch at the same time? Like, I get it. Like, I'm really into what he's going for in general. I think this was just a wild miscalculation of the character of Willy Wonka.

And I'm super confused by how this correlates to Dahl and the 1971 original. I can't really speak to the Johnny Depp stuff. I don't know anything about that. Yeah. I did see that. That wasn't good i i've never seen that movie but like willie wonka is um a deranged and in some ways mean-spirited character and to basically give us a none of that in this movie i thought was a very odd choice now obviously it's a movie made for kids and there's something in the like mode of kids entertainment that it's like we have to be like sweet and let

them into it but i like kids entertainment that like grows you up it's like you joanne and i were on the zoom before you got in here and she was like can you guys talk about this and i just like i literally just gave that you're not alone that. There are other people feeling that way. And I'm sure there's like, there's a generational thing. And maybe there's, I don't, I don't know. I obviously like, I'm obsessed with Gene Wilder. He was one of my favorite actors. It was, this was a very tall order for anyone who was going to be asked to fill those shoes.

Let me, I'll just give a very brief snapshot of what this movie is actually about for the listeners at home. So this is the origin story. This is the prequel to the Wonka tale. I guess the prequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, ultimately, but more specifically, the Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory film. Right. Because something's lost in the soft music. They specified that it's an alternate reality.

Oh, they did? Yeah. Oh, I didn't see that. Yeah. So this is non-canonical? Yeah. That's what they're saying, according to Wikipedia. This is like across the Spider-Verse of Wonka stories?

It was like not cited. There was no citation on Wikipedia when I read it this morning, so maybe it's been removed. But yeah, it's an alternate reality. Okay. Well, that's fascinating. This movie captures the early days of Willy Wonka as a rising chocolatier in... Is it jolly old England?

Where are we meant to believe it is? No, there are a lot of French undertones. Fantasy, Europe-Asia sort of fantasy. Europe-Asia, okay. Yeah. Though it seems like his childhood with his mom, Sally Hawkins, was spent

in the Amazon? Something like that. Yeah, so. Interesting, okay. Like on a lovely houseboat. Is Willy Wonka English if his mother is Sally Hawkins? Could be.

I know that this is a magical children's movie, so looking for logic is a mistake. And also an alternate reality. Okay. Well, the multiverse is ruining cinema that's that much we can confirm uh i this is also a film it's not a it's a film not without thematic ideas it is of course about uh nostalgia memory the things that give us joy

whether or not you can overindulge in those things it's a movie about illiteracy and capitalism and its encroachment upon our modern society uh And drug cartels. It is absolutely. And forced labor. There is a metaphor there. Yes. This is a very Marxist film in a lot of ways. A corrupt church. Yes, absolutely.

All power structures are evil unless, of course, you're Willy Wonka and you make good chocolate, in which case, grow, grow, grow. That's about a small business, you know? Until it isn't. Until it starts killing children. Well, that's your problem that's your that's your reality that's your wonka that is a different wonka i'm so glad they made a wonka for you guys but but but there is um like this stripping of natural resources in other like

other communities in this that's what Wonka is doing. Absolutely. It's about gentrification. It's about the environment. This is a movie for our time. This is what you're saying, right? Here's the deal. I also love the Gene Wilder, Willy Wonka film.

That was like, it's very important to me. And movies like that, I do believe we should have more of the really scary return to Oz labyrinth, like scare the shit out of you children's movies. I think they're great.

I think they should exist. I don't think we should be so soft. That being said, I, I didn't find myself sort of entangled in how does this connect to the Gene Wilder version of Willy Wonka? Because I don't think Chalamet is even remotely trying. He's not.

To do Wilder at all. And so I was just sort of like, okay, version of Willy Wonka because I don't think Chalamet is even remotely trying he's not to do Wilder at all and so I was just sort of like okay no one's trying to do Wilder versus like someone like let's say Alden Ehrenreich who is kind of trying to do Harrison Ford and failing you know what I mean it's like Chalamet's like I'm not even gonna try I'm gonna just do something else entirely we've already had Johnny Depp's absolutely like like, horrifying, terrible version of Willy Wonka. And Chalamet's like, let's just do this. And you're right that they lightly, lightly use one, two songs from the Gene Wilder film. But, like, other than that, I don't think they're really well in, like, some visuals in, like, flower teacups and stuff like that. Other than that, I don't think they're really well in like some visuals in like flower teacups and stuff like that.

Other than that, I don't think they're trying that hard. Again, this is just from Wikipedia reading this morning. I do my research for this podcast. Slugworth, which is the name of the villain in Wonka, is like the creep, is the name of the creepy guy. Yeah. In, you know, so there are like, I had forgotten that. There are other, and the fine print is another thing, you know? Yes.

That shows up in both. So it like is aware, I guess, which sort of undermines the alternate reality point. But anyway. The Slugworth is like a critical character in the first movie. He's kind of revealed to be like working for Wonka. So we know that Wonka is like the chief chocolate maker in the universe in that movie.

So in some ways, it's kind of setting up like, it's kind of like a Bond movie in that way for, you know, who's going to take over Spectre. I, of course, I respect that you guys got a lot out of this. And I think what I'm not trying to, I wasn't necessarily bumping on like, how will all of the puzzle pieces fit together to make the 1971 movie make sense to me? It's a question of like tone and approach. And,

uh, I thought the music was not good. I thought the production design, which was elaborate, but was quite bad. And I thought it was an attempt to kind of like bring a kind of spirited English production to what I don't view as like, um,

I don't feel like it's like the right world to build around the story. Mileage may vary. I think this is like a pretty good kids movie, but it is being marketed and presented as something

a little bit bigger than that. There is like an air of prestige around it. I think in part because Timothee Chalamet is a part of it. And he's very rarely been a part. Now that's, you know, maybe I'm overreading it, but Chalamet has made really interesting decisions as an actor in the first five or so years of his mega fame.

And this is the first one where I'm like, this was cynical. This was just reaching your quadrant. Like, I don't love everything that Timothy Chalam Chalamet has ever done. Someone was asking me are you completely in the bag for Timothee Chalamet? Is that why you like this? I'm like, no. There are things that he's done or projects that he's done that I haven't really loved. But he is a theater kid. He grew up doing

musicals, right? So I think he just wanted to do a musical. I don't think it's that cynical. I think War Brothers is cynical for IP fatigue know fatigue and exhaustion and ringing every drop now they just have like the barbie playbook for everything and like that's fine it made them billions of dollars i think this movie will do quite well too yeah so sure but i i hear what you're saying i think the other thing that lending it this air of prestige

and again this is like a this is a very strange journey I went on around this movie is that I thought everyone had seen Paddington and I was completely wrong about that because I keep bumping up against people who have it and I think perhaps influenced by um its prominence in the Nick Cage Peter Pascal film like last year that Paddington 2 is like a central part of that movie I was like this is just in the zeitgeist, but it turns out it's in my bubble of like film Twitter zeitgeist. But in the bubble of film Twitter zeitgeist, it is, the Paddington movies are considered art, right?

And an elevation of something. And so I think that in addition to Chalamet's presence is what I agree with you, Sean, is what's giving Warner Brothers the hope that this will be similarly revered. I don't think it's as good as Paddington at all. And I agree with you. I think the songs should be 20% better than they are.

None of them are like showstoppers. I think Chalamet is really good as a musical performer though. Like his, I think his, like his weird long body, the way that like he dances with his like little stork legs and like his singing is good like it's not horrifically auto-tuned I was just like I it's working for me um that's how I feel man how do you feel about the musical it's endearing I yeah I mean I grew up on Mary Poppins which this reminded me a lot of both in terms of um large capitalist themes sort of bizarrely explored over a little bit longer than you need to in a movie made for children.

This sort of, you know, the fake Euro quality to it, this magical person who comes in and teaches like and, you know, varying comparison and varying degrees of performance from the great Julie Andrews to Dick Van Dyke. Or man, as my son calls him every time he watches him doing the chimney sweep thing. Kind of the er-man, Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins. Yeah, like anyone. Certainly a role model for me. A friend of mine gave me very beautiful Napoleon andon and josephine christmas ornaments this year for the tree which they're they're great um and my son saw them and he went men and then he went hat and i was like that's there we go that's a summary anyway that really does but yeah in some

ways more detailed than ridley sc's. We've got it. But yeah, so I thought of Mary Poppins, which I now I watch at least like clips of. We watch the songs, not the full videos, because he doesn't have an attendance band with my son. And Gene Kelly, who, you know, is like a very one of the great dancers. But like Gene can sing like it's not great, but he sort of sings and some of his songs are amazing and some of the songs that I've now watched a million times on YouTube are like not that good and so I the production design the musical numbers themselves are I think the fact that they were even trying to do them in this, like, very cheesy old Hollywood way is, I think, a lot of what got my emotional, you know, response. Because I love those musicals.

I like that people are still trying to do them. I don't expect it all to be like, like to me in some ways, the shabby, you know, but also Hollywood musical nut ness of it is more enjoyable than like a very professional, like super theater Broadway thing at this point, I'm a little weirded out by that. And I find something like really like magical and fantastical about this old school stuff.

So I, I really liked it. I mean, like, I can't remember any of the songs except for the one that Timothy, Chalamet, and Noodle sing with a giraffe. You know? That was... I think the best sequence in the movie for me

and the most Willy Wonka to me, that sequence. Because of its weirdness and the idea of milking a giraffe. And that felt more like the essence of what I perceived to be like Dahl's Willy Wonka world. But I was also delighted when Timothee Chalamet started tap dancing on the table with that guy who needed the magic love potion or chocolate or whatever. Sure.

I mean, I really cannot believe you're comparing it to mary poppins and and and gene kelly like there's just no way no but it made me think of those things yeah and like nothing else that we may like that like kids entertainment like definitely does not like i know you've seen like every kids animation like film that has come out this year and some are good and some are not that good and like i don't care about any of them yeah it's very similar to me to Matilda the musical the Netflix movie that came out last year which I thought was a lot better than this honestly I just thought was more interesting and like they're very correlated obviously not just because of Dahl but because of the Englishness of the production because of the way that the songs are sort of like

good but maybe not good enough to be memorable but I much preferred that Tim mentions like musical adaptation of matilda is as mean as matilda is and so if you're looking for like the meanness of doll yeah that's what i agree with you and to be as clear-eyed as i can be around this i would say that like tempting to compare it to mary poppins probably more realistic to compare it to mary poppins returns like that's sort of more where it is. Which I also openly cried at. I also liked it.

I did because it was scratching some nostalgic thing from childhood. And I understand that those aren't the old Hollywood childhood things that are valued now and quote unquote film, Twitter, whatever. But they mattered to me. So it's not as well done, but that's why I liked it. Because there are different types of kids movies or musicals or things to to be made i also think similar to the paddington movies and again i won't get into like plot specifics or whatever but paul king knows how to deploy sally hawkins as this like emotional atom bomb um and did it in Paddington

and did it here. So, shamelessly, same thing. And that absolutely is what has gotten me both times

just kind of ugly crying is the deployment of Sally Hawkins. So, you know. That's a good one. And Chowme, like,

I think is very good in that moment and like under plays it and he can still you know he's not doing over the top I seem like I just took cocaine except for one scene when he's like inventing chocolate and he you know is seems like he's imitating drugs but in he can just like hold the camera you know and like be quiet and like have a reaction and it still communicates something so I liked that part as well he actually got me when he started singing pure imagination that's when I lost it because they weave pure imagination throughout the score and then like the little girl is you know reunited with her mother which like yes like I get it I'm

like it's hitting a particular heart string but then he just it it comes in like so soft and I was like oh my god movies and just started you know and that is borrowing from the the song like from the old movie and from my nostalgia for that movie but I don't know. It worked. I thought that was, you know, in terms of like leaning on the nostalgia of the Gene Wilder film, I thought they were pretty graceful with it. You know, like pure imagination is the tone of the chime of the bell in the church tower. It's just sort of like in the movie. And then they don't, I just think it is like sort of lightly done right at the end in this really sort of wistful way that I found really special. We haven't talked about Hugh Grant yet.

Much as he is in Paddington 2, I think Hugh Grant is like phenomenal in something that should have been a disaster. Like it really should not work at all. And maybe Sean, it didn't work at all for you. But I just think he is like so funny so wry so witty just like a delightful performance i'm not the hugh grant expert on the show amanda what did you think i laughed a lot i like i mean you know but like i laughed at the part of the trailer where he's like once i've started dancing like i can't stop and is doing it. And I was like, well, that's kind of funny. Obviously the lie flat bit was amusing to me.

I'm not sure like the Oompa Loompa character motivation was the most developed aspect of this film. A lot of people had a lot of different motivations and him being like ostracized from his Oompa Loompa friends because their three cacao beans or whatever got stolen. It was incredibly bad writing. Like insanely bad writing. Well, but the question is, the question is how do you do the Oompa Loompa?

Because if you do a faithful adaptation of the doll book that Sean is glamoring for, that is an atrocious storyline in the original. I'll just say I'm not opposed to like reimagining or like i i have hailed many a prequel or reimagining of many a property over the years it's not that's not what bothers me in particular i think that they i think q grant was was was fun i you know his performance is good there's nothing negative to say he's always good he's always entertaining the fact that he signed on to do this despite the fact that he has said that after the fact he absolutely hated making this movie and was miserable the whole time because of the green screen and everything else

that went into it with the makeup and everything. I just think that that part of the movie is a very cynical signal to people that this is Willy Wonka, even though very little else in the movie is what I perceive to be Willy Wonka. So why are the Oompa Loompas in the way that they communicate,

in the way that they act in the way that they act and like weirdness of their creature kind of the same as in the movie from 50 years ago but nothing else in this movie is I it's just one of those things where when I'm watching the movie I'm like so but this was just done to sell more Oompa Loompas you know like it's just not it's just totally cynical and that annoys me in comic book movies it annoys me in you know any kind of ip i i i feel like i hate cynical ip grabs and nostalgic grabs so i feel like i should be aligned with you sean but i do think that there is something very i think earnest in paul king and his vision as a filmmaker like i don't think he's a cynical filmmaker and so i didn't feel like i think he just signed up to make a willie wonka

movie though so they were like yeah i don't i don't know if it's a studio note i don't know paul king loves oompa loompas i don't know what it is but he was like we got to get oompa loompas in here even though my filmmaking style is so opposite of doll and so opposite of the Mel Stewart right I mean the other the other note to that effect in the movie is the the Keegan-Michael Key character playing a chocolatier who eats a lot of chocolate chief chief of police yeah oh sorry chief of police who is working for the other chocolatiers he's like employed by the cartel the chocolate cartel sure that that was the part of the movie that was the part of the movie that i i thought was terrible and hated but it was also the part of the movie that i felt was closest to doll which is filled with like terrible fat phobia and all right right

right and he just keeps he's paid in chocolate and he keeps like expanding and sort of like a nutty professor style way I was like that's very dull to me in a way that I didn't actually think needed to be in the movie but I was like if he felt like he needed a lesson about greed and overconsumption inside of his Willy Wonka movie this is a character that

portrays that. I liked the chocolate. Is this Willy Wonka movie also ACAB? There's a good cop There is a good cop Oh yeah He's nice Yeah

But he's just helping to expose corruption Yeah Guys this movie's really trying to bite off a lot Yeah Forgive the pun Sure

Come on I did like the chocolate cartels like Razzmatazz like do you have a sweet tooth number That one was really good The one below yeah yeah

and they start like they're just doing like full i enjoyed that waking broadway i thought that was good there were a couple of pretty good musical numbers obviously paul king's got a real facility with this kind of inventive filmmaking i think really more my issue is just like what the cover of this is you know like what the rapper is where i'm just like yeah i would much rather personally an original story like an original musical from paul king or use another character that maybe we haven't seen iterated on part of the paddington thing too is there have been animated paddington uh series over the years but i don't think there had ever been like a full life live action movie with that character and he was the perfect person to communicate the kind of sweetness and wonder of the Paddington character.

This is something that we've seen before done better in a slightly more interesting way for me personally. So I also just genuinely don't think Chalamet was right for this, but I know a lot of people will disagree. And it sounds like you guys disagree. I thought it was pretty great. I thought it was great. I think that, um, and I think it was really smart to center the story of Wonka on this like relationship with, you know, this child noodle who is like the second lead of the film.

You wouldn't know it, but is, and, um, what, another thing that I love about a Paul King film, just going off the two Paddington movies in this movie is the way that he fills his,

like to the brim, his movies with these like great British actors, um, who don't always get, you you know like they're filled with like Charlotte Ritchie's here or the horrible history guys are here like the cast of half the cast of BBC Ghost is here like there's just like a lot of like fun British character actors Matt Lucas has been in like all the stuff like that show up again and again and I as someone who loves like british television or whatever it's like a thrill for me i thought patterson joseph who plays slugworth was so perfectly keyed into what the tone of this movie was um which could easily have gone horribly wrong

but i thought he struck the balance of like sort of genuine menace with the cartoon that it, and you equally buy him floating up in the air after having consumed a chocolate. Yeah. Yeah, I thought all the chocolate sounded good. Yeah. I like chocolate. Would you, and they do. Yeah.

Would you want something that allowed you to like levitate? Sure. That seems fun. Joanna, are you interested in that? No, but there are some other the like silver lining chocolate that's a great that's a great uh idea for a chocolate but no i do not want to fly up into the air that sounds horrifying to me and in and in the june wilder film fizzy lifting drink is like i think one of the scariest parts of the of the movie so

is this movie gonna get any awards consideration i don't think so chalamet was nominated for best actor musical or comedy at the golden globes it's a globe movie it's not an oscar movie didn't really get i don't think any more attention at the globes though as i recall that's okay timmy will be there he will be there he will be there it is good for him and do you guys think it'll be a hit i i have a feeling it is i haven't really been looking at any of the tracking or anything like that i think like medium hit i don't know i like i genuinely don't know because um the the bad vibes off the trailers is it was. Once you become a meme, a

Don't Worry Darling of 2023, it's really hard to claw your way back. I think this is a good movie. I don't think Don't Worry Darling is, but it's tough. I don't know. As Sean said, isn't Saltburn the Don't Worry Darling of 2023? Well, but it... Do you feel like it was in memified

in advance the way that's more what i'm talking about yeah oh in the negative way yeah yeah yeah no it wasn't i meant more like movie to movie yeah i hear what you're saying well i mean it's part of this interesting trend that's been happening now which we may have we talked about it like presenting movies that are musicals as not musicals and trailers. Right. The Mean Girls trailer. The Mean Girls trailer is doing this, of course. Color Purple to a lesser extent, but it's not quite clear the level of musical that that film is.

Also very strange that Warner Brothers has this movie and then one week later, The Color Purple, both of which are movie musicals, like big lavish movie musicals. It's because people don't really like musicals and they're trying to hide that from people. And that's fascinating. I will say that's what I love about this musical.

Sometimes people make musicals and they're kind of ashamed that they're making a musical and they kind of try to like, you know, pretend like it's not a musical. And this is like, what if we're Busby Berkeley high kicking on tables? You know what I mean? Like, what if we're doing that instead? And so I think if like, what if we're Busby Berkeley high kicking on tables? You know what I mean? Like, what if we're doing that instead?

And so I think if like, whoever the marketing geniuses at Warner Brothers decided to pretend this wasn't a musical, that's one thing. But I don't think if Paul King had like, created control of the trailer cut, I don't think he would have like, hidden the musical aspect of it from audiences.

But it is a weird trend. It's very bizarre. Also, I mean, this is a movie for children like that's the it's been a pretty quiet kids movie year at least at the theaters so that's not true like super mario and well yeah turtles did like super well across the spider verse like right that's true although across the spider verse i guess i think of as all all generate all generations and i suppose super mario's wound up being that way too but i did there hasn't been one like this fall

i i guess yeah i think it's just a question of live action which isn't a much harder thing to do like everything that you just cited joanna is animated and also you know this just this fall we've had the boy in the heron we've had wish we've had we migration is coming out next week there have been a lot of animated movies this year. There have not been very many live action children's movies really in the last 10 years. It's kind of a,

it's an increasingly fading art form because animation is so profitable. So, I think it's a high bar though. It's hard to make movies like this. It's hard to make a Mary Poppins. You know, that's not easy.

It's true. So, and maybe I'm, I'm a 40 year old man living in America. This movie ain't for me. You know, that's not easy. It's true. So, and maybe I'm, I'm a 40-year-old man living in America. This movie ain't for me. And I recognize that. Do you think Alice would like it? Probably. Yeah.

Probably. I mean, it's very colorful and very beautiful. It has music. I think, you know, Timmy's got, he's got, he's got a tractor beam, you know? He's really a very special, rare kind of performer. So, like, maybe that's a way for us to talk about where he is is at um again i thought he was miscast but really giving it his all i thought he's saying okay i think it's fair in the tradition of gene wilder not really being like a classically gene kelly style musical performer that you don't need someone to carry a movie like this even though

they're not yeah you know um judy garland so i i didn't have a problem with that i think this i think it's i'm a little dubious of this as a choice for him given the taste that he has exhibited but i'm sure the payday was great it'll certainly make him more famous and it does feel like he is in the elevation stage of stardom. So, you know, the movie star playbook is a bit of a half-hairbrained concept for a pod, Joanna. We basically are just running through an actor's career so far,

usually somebody who's in the early to mid-stage of their career. Yeah. Talk about what's worked, what hasn't worked, why that might be, what it is that they do well. And then maybe a couple things we would like to see them do maybe a filmmaker would be fun for them to work with maybe a kind of movie i think you could make the case that after dune you might have said he should do something like a kid's movie he should do something to

expand his audience so he did do that right um i had forgotten that uh film Men, Women, and Children was his introduction to cinema. Do you guys remember that? I do remember that. I didn't remember him in it at the time, but I did remember that. I think he's like the eighth lead in the film. This is a Jason Reitman

movie that was widely rejected by movie culture despite the fact that it stars Adam Sandler. And a number of other people I like. Caitlin Dever and Rosemary DeWitt, Jennifer Garner,

Ansel Elgort. Good cast, but very, very bad film. I don't really... Chalamet didn't really make an impression on me in that one. I don't remember him in that.

He did make an impression in Interstellar. Yeah. What do you remember about Interstellar and Timothee Chalamet's work? Amanda, what was your snort about? Do you hate Interstellar? Are you in interstellar yeah what do you remember about interstellar and timothy chalamet's work amanda what was your snort about do you hate interstellar are you yeah i don't like it i'm sorry i like no that's okay you know respect to all the 26 year olds who are like this is our this is our kubrick film but it's not for me i don't

really think it makes sense i don't think we've talked about interstellar joanna oh i like interstellar but i like it i like it i think it makes emotional sense i don't think it makes like logistical sense and um as you know the the key emotional sense that it makes is mcconaughey as dad who has missed his children growing up, right? That's the juice of the movie. And so, you know, Chalamet is- I'm starting to relate to it more as I'm missing more and more of my daughter's time because of podcasting, you know? Yeah, I can just see you in that podcasting chair just like ugly crying as you get sort

of FaceTime from your daughter or something like that. I mean, that literally happens. I'm getting sent videos and I'm sitting here talking to Amanda about the 18th movie of the month and I'm like, it's all slipping through my fingers. It's unbelievable. Maybe it's a great film. Maybe I've misunderstood it. Hey, guys, I just wanted to say as a 27-year-old who loves Kubrick, this movie is not it.

Just to be on the record, this movie is not it. So don't loop me in. Hey, guys, nice to see you. Oh, is it like a full big picture is out on Interstellar? Is that the vibe? We may have arrived at a time in which I'm the most in out of all of us, which is kind of weird. I have given it, I've felt more generous towards it

since I revisited it during COVID. I do think that it is a wildly bungled final, whatever, 15 minutes concluding moment that he desperately needed a co-writer. But there's some really amazing stuff in it. Chalamet is... Is Chalamet well-cast as a young Casey Affleck? Because it is Casey Affleck who becomes the older Cooper

at the end of the movie. That's a hair-based decision, isn't it? Yeah. But it works. Yeah, I think it works too. In 2014, he also made a movie called Worst Friends that I've never heard of. And then in 2015, a movie called One and Two

that I've also never heard of. I saw that at south by southwest uh because kieran shipka is the like two to his one and it's sort of like this like interesting almost x-men-esque but make them amish sort of thing it was really it was really bad it's very bad but doesn't it seem like it would be good x-men would make them amish with Timmy and Kiernan Shipka? Yeah. Wow. Okay.

Maybe I'll check that out, even if it's bad. A few other movies as he's kind of prepping for his big moment. The Adderall Diaries, where he plays the teen Stephen Elliott. I love the Coopers, the comedy, the family comedy, Miss Stevens. Is Miss Stevens the Chastain movie, or is that the Jennifer Garner movie? No, Miss Stevens is the one the Chastain movie or is that the Jennifer Garner movie no Miss Stevens is the one with um Lily Ray and it's about an acting teacher and her students oh right very good it's very good I haven't seen Miss Stevens um and then of course in 2017 we get quite a run we get Call Me By Your Name, Lady Bird, Hostiles, the Scott Cooper Western, and a movie called Hot Summer Nights that I think I saw at South By in like 2015 that was eventually released.

To catch the Timmy wave. Yes, exactly. Acquired and released for that. Actually, one of the most significant movie years for an actor of the last 10 years. Yeah. This like builds a legend very quickly just on the strength of Call Me By Your Name and Lady Bird and creates, like, two different, I think,

character archetypes for him at the same time. Cool, disaffected, impossible boy and wildly emotional, sensitive, feeling, sensual boy. And he's phenomenal, both of these movies. This is a really interesting year because this is like the road diverging the wood for like Lucas Hedges and Timothee Chalamet. Like they come up, you know,

Hedges is in Manchester by the Sea in 2016. Then they're both in Lady Bird. And I kind of thought of them as like, here it is. Right. One and two, like here they are. And then Hedges is like sort of evaporated into the morning mist. They also both,

the next movies, or not, very soon after they both do opioid addiction dramas. Correct. Beautiful Boy and Ben is Back, starring Lucas Hedges, which I,

and Julia Roberts, which I think is the superior film. No offense to Beautiful Boy. It's just, it's a tough watch. I think they're both very flawed yeah and they were both highly touted ahead of release um and ben is back is directed by uh peter hedges right his father um but you're right they are linked in a way in terms of their kind of

acting personas and their generational personas beautiful boy like they tried they tried he tried you know yeah yeah it's a sad story. It's not the best movie. No. I remember the like early awards hype before that movie was out was like, Tim's going to get a nomination for this. Like this is going to be a big Oscar play for him. Weird looking at his filmography that he played both Stephen Elliott and Nick Sheff to Bay Area authors with drug problems.

That's just like an interesting twofer for him. I don't know. He doesn't have like a Northern California association, so I don't know why he's playing Bay Area authors. Yeah, he's an East Coast king, right? Yeah. So Beautiful Boy starts like the post Call Me By Your Name hype.

And he makes a couple of weird decisions. And you can see why he's making those decisions because for previous generations, they're tried and true. addiction the addiction drama of beautiful boy the obviously i will go be in a woody allen movie thing you know where he's going to do a rainy day in new york just as the kind of crisis the kind of you know resuscitation of the woody allen controversies begin and so that movie is effectively deleted from culture you actually can watch it now i think on amazon um and it's not not very good although i think he's giving a fairly spirited try at one of the lesser significantly lesser woody allen scripts at kind of like being a hot version of

woody allen's classical you know nerd romantic lead persona not a good movie it's so it's a weird i actually kind of dispute the because wonder wheel 2017 i remember so much like drama around that movie and like the actors who were in that movie felt like they had to answer to being in a woody allen movie so it's like an interesting choice for him to like you know touch that even after wonder wheel i think it went into production in the immediate aftermath of wonder wheel and so it had not fully coalesced um and then ultimate like it didn't original i think it didn't actually get did it get american distribution rainy day new york like i never went to a screening or anything i saw it online yeah it was very complicated and i do remember him giving a quote to the effect of, it's not something I would do now, you know, knowing, you know, trying to walk it back, essentially.

He also makes a Netflix movie, a big, bold, historical drama, The King. Which, do you like The King? No, but I like that it happened. And that was a real, I like the memes on Netflix movie because that also stars Robert Pattinson. It does. Doing some remarkable hair and accent work, as I recall. It's trying to do a lot. It's trying to do Henry IV and Henry V, you know? And so it's a big... A lot of bold hair choices in that movie.

Absolutely. Pattinson is having a ball. He's having a really nice time. Joel Edgerton, he's given it his all. Not my favorite Falstaff I've ever seen, but he's given it his all.

Oh, right. And this is when Timothee and Lily-Rose Depp were rumored to have a... Did they? Yeah, for a while, I think. Yes, they did. Good for them.

He's certainly... He's done well with the ladies. Yeah. He's had a nice run. That year, he also did well, once again, with's had a nice run that year he also did well once again with Saoirse Ronan

in Little Women directed by Greta Gerwig that's a great move for him that's a great move it's an all time move and he's so so good

as Laurie why is he not in Barbie because I think not even a cameo Greta was asked about this and she said that she was going to write...

She tried writing cameos for both Saoirse and Timmy. But I think Timmy was tied up with Dune, and I think it was like a scheduling thing where they couldn't get him in. Okay. This is... I heard someone the other day say that, based off of Boy in the Heron and Pattinson, and that I think... They're like, oh, Pattinson's speed running the Christian Bale playbook, right? Because he's done like Batman and he's doing this like Miyazaki voice role

and stuff like that. But like, you know, here's Timmy in an iconic Christian Bale role as Laurie in Little Women. So, you know, it's interesting because like listening to, you know, Chris and Andy this week on The Watch, like listen to you guys talk about

the movie star playbook as you often do in the watch like listen to you guys talk about the movie star playbook as you often do in the ringer shows like you it's often leo seems like the model that you guys like to compare it to i think christian bale is an interesting one to think about as well i think for because leo leo is an actor's actors but more a movie star than an actor's actor and then christian bale is like an actor's actor who is also a movie star also was Batman I don't know it's just like a slight calibration off he's

a great Hall of Fame candidate next time Christian Bale does something he actually just came up in a future episode because he was long rumored to play Enzo Ferrari in the Michael Mann film and didn't do that and then ultimately played Ken Miles in the Ford vs Ferrari movie. But he's also another one of those actors

who has a lot of almosts or didn't quite do the thing that he was going to do. And I think Timothee Chalamet is kind of becoming one of those people too. Like this movie that we're talking about today, Wonka,

it was like maybe you, it was Tom Holland and Timothee Chalamet. And Paul King says it was always Timothee Chalamet. But like there's a world where it could have been Tom Holland. Right. And we know Tom Holland

is his song and dance man too you know I think he would have had some fun with this part but like to your point I agree with you this is nowhere near as weird as the Gene Wilde performance

nor is it blessedly as weird as the Johnny Depp performance but it's way weirder than anything Tom Holland would have done yeah there is at least some sort of there's an eccentricity to

Chalamet as a performer. And just like a slight disconnect if you're like oh that's you know that's Timmy like being Willy Wonka. He brings a movie

starness to it like even because of our awareness with him. I agree. Can we add a really important thing that he does between Little Women

and the next film on your list here? Yeah. Which is host SNL in 2020 and he is really good at it. I know he just hosted and everyone like Little Women and the next film on your list here. Yeah. Which is host SNL in 2020. And he's really good at it. I know he just hosted and everyone like, but like he had like a couple of sketches on there.

They're like one he did with Pete Davidson, obviously, but also there was like the like tiny horse. Yeah, the tiny horse ones. The Jets sketch is legendary. Yeah, he's in my heart forever because of that. Yeah. So like that's, you know, it's not a film, but it is an important, I think, building block to his brand of like, this is what I can do.

Look, I'm actually also really funny. Like I can do that as well. 2021 is a critical year for him in a couple of ways. I like what you said about Christian Bale, Joanna, because he is trying to navigate that very thin line between franchise greatness while retaining credibility as a great actor, as a rising, promising young actor. So he appears in three films in 2021, and he chooses to work with Wes Anderson, Denis Villeneuve, and Adam McKay. Three pretty smart bets in general. The French Dispatch, he appears in one of the four segments of the film in the black and white

segment about the sort of the French artistic resistance. He's, of course, Paul Atreides in Dune. And in Don't Look Up, he plays a wildly underbaked character named Yule I did not remember that his name was Yule who was like a freegan who was like trying to romance Jennifer Lawrence right great wig work he shows up at the like he gets to come to like their last dinner right yes yeah he participates in them you know which I you know I continue to think works really well in a movie that kind of doesn't work all that well. But that movie, on the one hand, I think doesn't have the strongest critical reputation, but was nominated for Best Picture and is clearly one of the most watched Netflix films of all time. And so that actually helps him in this journey.

You know, he has great exposure in this movie. And then French Dispatch is very, very good. And Dune is amazing. And he's, I would not have guessed that he was perfect for Paul Atreides and maybe we'll hold to see part two.

Hold judgment, yeah. But I, I bought it in the last 30 minutes of that movie. And I wasn't, that was the part I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to buy. Joanna, you're like a Dune expert.

Do you think he's the right Paul? I think he's a great Paul. that was the part I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to buy. Joanna, you're like a Dune expert. Do you think he's the right Paul? I think he's a great Paul. Thank you so much for calling me a Dune expert on a podcast where I think you guys coined the term spice heads, and I would never really want to go toe-to-toe with you and plus Chris Ryan on your spice enthusiasm. But yeah, no, I love Dune. I love the book.

I think he's a great choice for this because there is something about paul paul atreides like no spoilers for dune but like paul atreides is an incredibly like able to gather a movement around him and then also has just like slight offbeat problems with him as well and i think uh it's a complicated it's a messiah figure that is also extremely complicated that and to go from a boy to being in the middle of that because i love how dune opens with like villeneuve's dune opens with taking its time with timia is just like this this princeling you know what i mean who's on this journey and then is thrust into these harsher conditions. And in terms of like,

if we're comparing the Pattinson, Chalamet, are they speed writing Christian Bale's playbook or not? I think Matt Reeves, the Batman and Dune are two of the like most elevated franchise choices. A young actor could make in the last couple of years. And yeah, so he gets all the

all the exposure and glory of of like a big blockbuster uh franchise without you know without being in a bad dc or bad marvel movie right so 2022 bones and all no one saw this movie i did i did i think it's pretty good i love this movie i like it too um it's clearly a like luca guadagnino and i have we have a bond we have a we have a partnership and you can do anything and everything includes all the way up to a um existentialist cannibal melodrama um but i think a very very good performance from him a very like Francis Ford Coppola in the 80s

like Outsiders Rumblefish kind of a performance that is really good like more like a little bit of his Matt Dillon movie and I don't think

it you know got a little bit sucked into the kind of late COVID era pandemic and it was an Amazon movie and the festival it got like a

Thanksgiving release yeah it was a weird time it was strange it is obviously like festival. It got a Thanksgiving release. Yeah, it came out at a weird time. It is obviously a pretty upsetting movie. There's a very strange Mark Rylance character. It's violent. It's pretty insane. Yeah.

But this is one of those movies where sometimes in your career as a young actor, you get defined by the ones that don't hit too. I think he really brings something special to this movie, even though Taylor Russell is the star. And if you put somebody else in it, it's just way worse. He really is making it additive. I like this one as a curveball choice after going Wes Anderson, Dune, Adam McKay on Netflix. Those are really big, bold, obvious things to do.

He does brooding teenager, like, incredibly well. In a way that, I think Christian Bale is a great comparison, Joe, but, like, for a lot of reasons, he has always been the next Leo to me, and that is because, like, for the first 10, like, 15 years of Leo's career, he was, you know, like the child star turned into baby-faced, brooding, you know, Romeo and Romeo and Juliet, all the girls have the picture of him, then does like a big franchise. I guess Titanic is, it's a franchise of one, you know? It's like a big thing. But keeps playing those sort of characters that are objects of desire, but in sort of like a removed way until he no longer can.

And he still can do that, you know? He's still in the baby-faced career of his phase. So that's what's interesting is when that starts going away. There's, of course, that great anecdote that Leo gave the advice to Timothee Chalamet and that the primary rules of rising alpha male movie stardom are no superheroes and no hard drugs. And I hope he sticks with it. I hope he follows Leo's guidance.

Leo never would have made Dune for the record. There's no movie that is even close. Actually, he's made something closer to Wonka than he has Dune

I think actually in his career. He was almost Spider-Man just to remind you. That's true. In the Coralco days? In the Jim Cameron

was going to make Spider-Man and he was going to be Jim Cameron's Spider-Man. But how old? That would have been a that would have been a quite a pivot like isn't dune timmy's titanic sort of yeah insofar as it's an epic story but titanic is not genre it's like it's a historical epic right you know it's not like dune has sandworms i mean that's a good point um sandworms icebergs what's the difference really

but like um that's true they are massive objects that are threatening the life of the characters in the film what was so what was leo doing at 27 like how old was he when he made like gigs in new york cash if you can is that him at like uh i think he's a little older i think he's is it maybe more like in the is it the marvin's room era at 27 so he's 74 so in so he's 22 when he makes marvin's room so it's 2001 basically right yeah so don's plumb incredible but Don's Plum. Gangs of New York. Yeah, Gangs of New York and Catch Me If You Can of 2002. So he's 28. Okay, got it. Gangs of New York, Catch Me If You Can.

And that, like, when he becomes, like, Scorsese's guy, that's his, like, move into something else entirely. Yes. And in terms of, like, being that sort of, like, boyish object of the affection sort of thing, I think the last thing he makes that feels boyish is Catch Me If You Can. Yeah. And then he's not. And I think Timmy can pull the boyish...

He's just got different bone structure and I think he can do that probably into his 30s in a way that DiCaprio couldn't. The thing that Leo does next and I wonder if this is what it will look like

for Chalamet. Set aside Dune 2 which we know is coming next year. The next three movies that Leo makes in that time are The Aviator, The Departed, and Blood Diamond. Those are grown-up movies. Those are movies about men. So it's gangs in New York in a way.

Yeah, but he's playing the kind of the younger person to Daniel Day-Lewis. He's like a child. He's almost like an orphan child. He's not quite Jack from Titanic, but he's still kind of the youthful figure in the story. In Blood Diamond, he's a man.

In The Departed, he's a man. He's a troubled man who kind of goes through the police academy, but he's a man. I wonder if Chalamet will try to stick to the boyishness that you're describing because it comes to him naturally, but I want to see him make the Safdie Brothers brothers movie i want to see him do something really transgressive and exciting because i feel like he's up for it and that seems to be his taste

when you hear him talk about that kind of thing i love how we just talked about his like cannibal love story movie and you're like do something more transgressive you're right but it is that is ultimately like a big swelling romance movie, you know? Like there's some traumatic stuff in it, but... Sort of. Yeah. Under everything. But it's like primary, like the number one tag on it is like Luca Guadagnino body horror, you know? Which is like Luca is in that phase and there's just like a lot of that.

And then it's like, but like, like you know what if these people had feelings too which is nice you know you gotta explore the feelings everywhere cannibals have souls sure you know

and they want to eat everybody else's soul right we know about Dune Part 2 next year can't wait yeah very exciting

arguably I think that and Furiosa are probably at this point the movie events of 2024 and in 2025 it's believed that he's going to be in production in uh james mangled a complete unknown which is a period piece about the life of bob

dylan which is just so risky god this is just the riskiest thing i've ever seen at least from my perspective because on the one hand i'm a big admirer of James Mangold. You interviewed James Mangold this year, right, Joanna? Yeah. On the House of R. I think he, we know he can do musical biopics, having seen Walk the Line. We know he's got a knack for complicated men. See Logan, Ford versus Ferrari, et cetera. Going all the way back to Heavy, the first film that he made.

Bob Dylan is Mercury. Like you can't hold him in your hands. So I think this is like a pretty dangerous move for Timmy, for Mangold, for movies. And I am a very, very, very emotional Bob Dylan fan. And I will be holding this movie to a very high standard. That being said, this is the perfect title holding this movie to a very high standard that being said this is the perfect title for this movie wonderful title the problem is I'm not there exists and I'm not there already like subverted what you can do with Mike with but with Bob Dylan refracts it yeah so yeah

if we're still doing the show in 2025 prepare yourself so like the running not quite not a joke because i hope bob dylan lives like for 40 more years and has a fruitful artistic output but like i for reasons having to do with life but also having to do with being in the media i'm truly dreading the day that bob dylan dies on the internet and like you know for a long time it's been like that's the day i leave you know i'm like goodbye um but now i'm realizing that it's the day that I have to be in a room with you while you podcast about the Bob Dylan biopic. Oh no. Okay. And it's good. You know, I have some time to prepare, to reset my expectations. I'll try to be supportive. You know what it feels like in a really sad way is it's very similar to the way that I thought about the Sam Raimi Spider-Man

movie before it came out, where I was like like I've been waiting my whole life for somebody to actually make a good Spider-Man movie and then they and then it worked he did it and and then everything was ruined after that but nevertheless like were you able to enjoy it in the moment oh yeah you are do you think now you one and two I think are fabulous like I love those movies I know but like now do you think you'd be able to or One and two, I think, are fabulous. Like, I love those movies. I know, but, like, now do you think you'd be able to, or are you just, like, too primed for, like, the disappointment that comes with the rest? I mean, I've said this before.

Like, part of the reason why it's been a hard few years here on the big picture is because, like, I got everything. I overindulged on everything I ever wanted. Like, they gave me, they gave 14-year-old, circa 1996, everything he ever wanted. So, that's's but that's okay there's still there's there's still more to show the lessons of wanka you know you can't that's why i said get everything you wanted yeah good point way to bring it back i can i mention two

other things that are potentially on yes yes radar one is film related one is not um the is he gonna be in greta's narnia project is he like mr tubness like that would be sort of an iconic again he's the sexy faun that james mcavoy played in the uh line of which in the wardrobe yep gear up for that one just get ready i'm like i've read and liked the narnia books but i'm not like don't, I obviously don't remember very much. I just feel very strongly that if Timmy's in it, he has to be the sexy faun. Like there's just really no other. Sexy faun is like basically the summation of Timmy. It's who he is. Right. So just get prepared. The other thing is, this has nothing to do with film, but it does have to do with celebrity, which is part of the package of the movie star. He's currently dating a Kardashian. Kylie Jenner. Yeah. I mean, again, this is Leo playbook,

you know? Well, Leo was dating Giselle at this time period in his life. Is that like the same? Yeah. But I think like Giselle to what? 99, 2001 is, I mean, I guess it would be Kendall if you want like the one-to-one, but Kylie is richer and, I don't know, available. But even like we're photographed like making out at the back of like the US Open, the tennis tournament, which is like a very Leo-coded place to be hanging out. I think it's great, you know? I hope everyone's happy. I hope those crazy kids are having fun i have no opinion about kylie and timmy i just think that like leo did this interesting thing whether intentionally or not where like i think giselle is the most famous person he ever dates i mean he did neil mccaml when he wasn't famous enough to do that but like um and then after that it's just like i mean forgive me like

lively like little like carbon copies of giselle famously never older than 25 right and so it's just sort of like he's not dating anyone who's who outshines our quality yeah outshines him or true star quality like interferes with his celebrity in any way um which i don't know it's not a an actorly way to talk about someone's career but it is certainly like a part of leo's trajectory we're talking about the movie star playbook not the actor playbook so it's all part of the equation i will say leo dating naomi campbell naomi campbell is king shit that's legendary behavior oh yeah he is truly the goat um timmy is not there yet for me he's got a few moves to make i do i need i need him to make a really like down and dirty scary

messy movie what about him and pta would love to see it okay reportedly you know once upon a time pta and leonardo caprio almost teamed up at about this same time, a little bit earlier than this for Boogie Nights in his early 20s. Didn't come to fruition, and now reportedly PTA and Leo are about to make a movie together in 2024. Okay. So some people think that movie is going to be an adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's Vineland. Wow. Which could be interesting. That's not confirmed.

I think he would be good with him i think pta has not loved pretty leading men in the last 20 years or so since punch drunk love he has veered away from right glamour well timothy is very pretty right now but ugly him up yeah let's get him punched in the fucking face you know age age comes for us comes for us all. He won't look like a sexy fawn forever. Or maybe he will. PTA is a good one. Who's someone you'd like to see him work with, Joanna? Anybody off the top of your head?

I'm like sort of looking at the Christian Bale IMDb to see if I can. I mean, David O. Russell is not what he was when he was sort of. No, it sounds terrible. Yeah, exactly. I don't know it's interesting it is interesting that christian bale has a james bangold uh film on his cv which is 310 yuma which is a great film um and ford versus rory yeah yeah great point um i don't have a great answer for this um i think i think i want to see him do but i actually think i want to see him do more like i don't think i want to see him with a big director i think i wanted to see him do more

weird experimental i mean safty's is an interesting question but like let use his star quality to boost like a younger creative uh who could use you know, some star quality in his... Like, this is not a one-to-one, but like Leo adopted Scorsese or Scorsese adopted Leo, you know, the way that they become associated with each other, like, is it what Luca is Scorsese? I kind of like it to be Greta. Yeah.

Like, I think Greta brings out something great in him. I'm not sure if I want him to be doing Narnia nor am I sure that I really want Greta to be doing Narnia but like whatever it's her life

the good news about Mr. Tumnus is like it's a small role and it's not like he's not gonna be locked you've secreted this into the world

he's not gonna be locked into the red scarf and the goat legs for a long time because Mr. Tumnus I think that's like a perfect level because he's not it doesn't lock him into the red scarf and the goat legs for a long time okay mr tom does i think that's like a perfect level because he's not it doesn't lock him into the franchise forever it's just something for him to do an iconic role he is so fun like i'm sorry i don't mean to like i don't need to manifest

this he can it could be no it could be sersha as the sexy faun i don't care who it is but like it seems like it should be to me. The best thing that ever happened to Greta Gerwig, I imagine is the wild success of Barbie, whether or not there are any downsides to that. We're going to find out, you know, she has been elevated into a class of expectation for the kind of movies that she can make now.

That is a slippery slope for any filmmaker. So the Chronicles of Narnia, a multi-part film about one of the most hallowed children's works of literature. Hard to do. Hard to do well. Maybe what he needs to do to fulfill, what Tim needs to do to fulfill your prompt of like, I want something weirder, or not weirder, but grittier from him, maybe, is what you're looking for. He needs to get punched in the face. He needs to have a knife to his neck.

He needs to be selling drugs. He needs to be doing something a little scary. What about Fincher? What if scary. What about like Fincher? What if he does something with David Fincher? But he has too much emotion. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, he's like,

he's all feelings. Yeah, I mean, that feels very similar to Gyllenhaal going in the Fincher blender and then being like, what did you do to me? You just stripped me

of my humanity by making me do this over and over and over again. I think what's interesting about watching him, because I have seen that Woody Allen film, and I feel like I agree with you. Like, his greatest power is his emotionality

is what makes Wonka hit for me. But he does have this sort of chameleonic, like, let me sort of melt into this director's style, like what he does with Wes Anderson or, you know, what he does with Woody Allen, et cetera. Like he is he is adaptable in a way. So it'd be interesting to see if he could melt into the Fincher world briefly, not in a in a long term director actor relationship, but like, could he do it? Speaking of Jake Gyllenhaal, what I don't want Timothee Chalamet to do is to take

your advice and just get punched in like 45 weird movies for the next like 10 years. Just do one. Yeah. Well, that could also be great advice for Jake Gyllenhaal. Do one Nightcrawler. I love Nightcrawler. That's a great movie. I'm such a Nightcrawler fan. There's also like, I think Pattinson is probably navigating this terrain the most successfully right now. And his film next year, Mickey 17, is the new Bong Joon-ho movie. That's another option is seek out a great master,

maybe even a master of international cinema, have him do a domestic production, a US production using his star power to get it financed. That would be exciting. Yeah. So there's a lot of options you can do there too. Um, Michael Hanukkah and,

and, and Timothy Chalamet who says no. Oh, interesting. You know, somebody really like dark and foreboding in his work. You know, it's an interesting comp,

not on like the star power quality or, or trajectory, but just sort of like, is like Steven Yeun, not on like the star power quality or trajectory, but just sort of like, is like Steven Yeun, what like Steven Yeun is doing with his like extremely emotional sort of like delicate, but can be funny sort of vibe that he brings to everything and, and making,

I think he makes no bad choices ever. Like, I just think he's incredible with his choices. Non-succession division. My favorite TV show of the year is Beef. So I'm with you on that. I really think he's

very brave and interesting as an actor. I'm not thrilled he's getting involved in the Marvel thing either. And that's the other thing is that something like that is going to come

for Timothee Chalamet at some point, unless they continue to extend Dune somehow. And then that just becomes the franchise lifeboat for his career. He's got a lot ahead of him.

He's going to have a lot of optionality. I think this movie is going to do well. Dune Part 2 is going to do well. We're happy for Timothee Chalamet. I feel like he's the rare guy in the last 10 years who you're like, okay, that guy. Yeah. He's the one.

Sam. Like it was not confusing the moment you saw Call Me By Your Name. I don't know if I saw it in Interstellar, but I did not see it. I recognized him. But know, I wasn't, I recognized him as a, but Amanda, haven't you, haven't you hung down on Austin Butler?

Like isn't Austin Butler in your pantheon? Um, when we were texting last night about a different, uh, piece of media that we'll be podcasting about soon and about some casting choices, I almost texted you. Maybe they should have cast Austin Butler instead.

So I haven't given up. I just, I'm thinking differently. You know? Yeah. I'm going to try to I can't wait to talk to you about that.

on this podcast because we're going to pivot the conversation, the tone of the conversation. This is a really, really weird programming. Well. But two films

I admired in deeply different ways. Okay. Joanna, thank you so much. We can hear you on House of R, Trial by Content, Prestige TV Podcast, with me and with Amanda, and with Rob Mahoney. What else is going on? Anything else you want to cite? You're the author of the book MCU, New York Times bestseller.

With Dash's dad. With Dash's dad. Yeah, that's the gist of it, I should say. I will say, if I'm going to promote one thing, obviously it's coverage of The Crown that I do with Amanda, incredible stuff. But also, cinema heads, if you're not watching Fargo season five, you're dramatically missing out of a tremendous experience. I got to make some time for this there's too many movies it's really hard good fargo season five rob and i are covering it on prestige thanks joe now let's go to my conversation with jonathan glazer and Johnny Byrne

to talk about The Zone of Interest. Gentlemen, thank you for being here. I want to start with you, Jonathan, obviously. I'm quite interested in what drew you to this project, but more specifically, I was wondering, did someone put Martin Amis' novel in your hand? How did this first start? No, I actually read a preview of the novel in the Observer newspaper in England. They had a preview of it, which sounded very interesting to me straight away from that. And then I got the book. I bought the book and read the book. and I encouraged Jim Wilson, my producer, to do the same as she did because we had been talking about the idea of seeing how we might tackle or take on this subject.

It was the sort of, even though we'd been talking about it and I'd been thinking about it for a long time previously, it was the first spark of the point of view that we ended up committing to. I wanted to start there because I'm curious about essentially everything that happens after that moment. And in particular, how did you two meet and how do you think about department heads for building out a project like this which is unusual well i mean i've known john for getting getting on for three decades i mean certainly 25 years or so and uh i've just been very lucky to to have worked with him all that time on you know on on a variety of all sorts of, you know, commercials, pop promos, feature films. And yeah, how did I first meet you?

I don't know. We did a Guinness commercial. Oh, no, Uncle Rabbit in the Headlights video. Oh, okay. Anyway. 99, that would be. 99. There you go.

One of my favorite videos of all time. That's nice. Ah, excellent. Thank you. So, yeah, I think the second part of the question was yours then. How do you choose your department heads? Just simply if they pick up the phone. Yeah.

If they answer the phone, the production designer, and Paul Watts, the editor, Jim, the producer, Mika, the composer, etc., etc., many, many wonderful collaborators and colleagues and friends. And it's just we've all kind of come up together in one way or another so and we're all pretty you know extreme in our dedication to the projects that we take on we enjoy the, we have a little community really of we should have shared. We grow a project together, you know,

we're working with with John is such an enormously collaborative process, I think throughout for everyone involved. And, and with that, as you know, over the years, we've all developed a, you know, fantastic language of how we work together and a shorthand and just an understanding of when something's missing, you know, that is of how we work together and a shorter hand and just an understanding of when something's missing, you know, that is more of a feeling than anything else, you know, and so there's a lot to be gained from that. So, yeah. I think also like you and like Johnny and Paul Watts, the editor, you've even kind of created software and a process in order to almost anticipate,

well, entirely to anticipate the way that we work together and organize all of the ingredients, right, so that we can work at the speed we do. I think what is remarkable about Jody and Paul and everybody I work with and the HODs is its speed of thought and speed of response. So when you're dealing with really kind of unwieldy, huge amounts of footage or sound, sonic sound footage or big picture footage, visual footage, you want to work very intuitively, very quickly.

There's so many logistical problems. We work very intuitively, very quickly. There's so many logistical problems working with John because, like you say, huge amounts of data, requirements to be so voracious with the truth of everything. And so a sound, for example, needs to be recorded as close as possible in its original format that it would have been heard but so everything needs to be there are many logistical problems that need to be tackled to free up the the immediate or as immediate as possible

creative solutions that that come along the way we're a little bit like a band you know I would say I mean just in that field that sense of band, you know, I would say, I mean, just in that field, that sense of, you know, you know, you know what I mean? It's like, there's the melody, there's the bass line, there's this, there's this, it's just a constant accumulation of ideas and solutions. And I think that that applies to production. But obviously, I can speak for post being sounds on a bit, you know,, but definitely there were many scenes in the film that were developed as a result of perhaps Mika

writing some music, that music not necessarily working, but them having an idea that is a sound thing, and we try that and Paul will react the cut to that. So certainly, yeah, the filmmaking process is about as far from the storyboard as you could possibly get. Yeah, you're anticipating my next question

in a lot of ways, Johnny, because there are a lot of discreet and unusual tactical decisions that are made in the making of this film and like the format of a feature film. So I was wondering

how much of that is, Jonathan, when you decide this is your project, are you going to Johnny and saying, I want it to sound like this? Or is it more of a discussion about the best way to represent that sound? How much of it is conceived versus how much of it is found in the aftermath of the capture? We start with a concept, with a theory, a best guess of what we think it is that is going to create the atmosphere of the film. What is it? What is that intersection between picture and

sound in this particular case, where a third experience happens, which is actually the experience of the film. So, you know, we talk about what we're going to need to, how, what's the resource we need for the sound? What's the resource we need for the pictures? You know, what are we going for? And it, but it's never just, okay, well, that's what we're going to, that's what we're going to do, then everything we do up until that point is going to be locked in, because it never works like that. Because by the time time you get there you've already had a new idea or you've, the film's kind of morphed into, you know, the ambition has morphed into a different direction so everything kind of peels off in that direction and then we make another discovery and we go to another direction so it's very, in flux I would say is the best way of describing

it all, you know, that everything is always in orbit in flux, right? Definitely. It's about being nimble and, you know, sifting for what the good stuff is and saying we need more of that and not at all prescriptive because you have no idea where you're going. You just need, you know, you need rocket thrusters that will get you there, but you don't know where you're going. Johnny, you alluded to this, but I'm intrigued by the idea of accuracy in telling a story like this i know for example that there were photographs that you could look at that were representative of the estate that is being recreated but sound is different it's hard to know how to recreate particularly the kinds of sounds the historical sounds that are represented in the film. So what part does accuracy play when trying to tell a story like this? Yeah, I mean, it's the whole part.

The way John chooses his HODs, I know, I well know now, I've been working many years with John, that the whole point is to approach anything you're doing with the utmost realism and sense of you know if it's an actor you want to for example there's a scene in the film where we hear Christian on a horse outside the boys window and you know for that scene it was absolutely vital that although there was no camera when we recorded it and then you know we it was vital that

we put Christian on a horse because you know his diaphragm would work differently as he moves around you know not just hearing the horse's footstep but his performance itself so um so yeah absolutely um to your question uh yeah having things sound as real as possible is crucial. Anything that we tried that sounded like someone acting in a voice booth, for example, stood out like a sore thumb because this film is so clearly apparently documentary. There was such lengths were gone to the recreation

of the house and the camp and how it looks so shiny, brand new as it would have been in those days, you know, so everything about it is to go and recreate as best as possible, the situation where you can record or, or reenact as real as possible. And it's physical. The sound is physical in a way that you can only achieve if you do work the way Johnny works, which is, you know, essentially field recordings, you know, going out there and getting those sounds and then, and then finding stuff that you could

never write or design or record if you were controlling it, but actually looking at that, listening to that sound. Sound by definition is interpretive, obviously, in a way that pictures aren't. So this whole soundscape was about an interpretation of that, of those atrocities, of the perpetual grind of this death camp. And then Sir Johnny wrote, you know, spent months organising, you know, kind of a manual, a manifesto almost, of what needed to be recorded, what might we hear, and start there and build on that. And then it would just constantly deepen.

And, you know, so the interpretation of that sound as you hear it, it might be a child screaming for pleasure, you know, in the swimming pool, but it also may be the sound of pain over the wall. You know, it was about just blurring, you know, blurring your certainty in those moments. So it's very, it's finding form, I think. The soundtrack, I will do one day, because I certainly don't want to watch it again,

but I'll listen to the film. You know, I want to listen to the film one day where I'll just literally only hear it. I won't see the picture, because I think the sound of this film is, well film is the other film. And I think that those pictures in your head will remain without pictures in the foreground because of the complexity and form of that soundscape.

Jonathan, I was hoping you could talk a little bit about working with mika again and then johnny maybe about what a sound designer's role is in terms of mixing in with the score of a film especially one like this so uh sorry to uh mika yeah just that you and mika have worked together before obviously and to incredible result and maybe what those conversations were like about what this film needed uh we were just chatting about that earlier, actually. Mika and I started working together in 2012, 2013. So we've been working together for 10 years. And we made Under the Skin together.

And we made a couple of short films together. And now this. And to be frank, it's not the big, there's never, the conversation is just ongoing across all of those years. There's never a kind of official,

let's have a now, let's have a conversation about this next project. It just, it's just, you're talking about, you're playing a game of pool and you're talking about it,

you know, and then you're getting on the bus and you're talking about someone else and you're getting on the bus and you're talking about someone else and then something occurs. It's very fluid, natural. And Mika and Johnny work very closely together when we're working. So it's a very – Mika and Paul work very closely together. We're all in the same swim together.

So I would say it's an ongoing conversation. It doesn't have a beginning or middle, and I hope not an end either. Johnny, what about for you? I'm curious about the division of responsibilities and how you work with a composer in a circumstance like this. Yeah, certainly I'm a sound designer who also does the mixing, the final mix. And Mika is, you know, very involved in that and comes to the final mixing stage

and we all work together. And the process of that is very much, you know, understanding what the film, what the music is doing in the film and where it needs to live, you know. And in this case, it was sort of almost not in the film, you know, for the film and where it needs to live. And in this case, it was almost not in the film for the beginning and end piece, for the bulk of the score, it's doing a different job than being an underscore. It's an enormous, powerful way to start. But to your question, yeah,

that was a decision that Mika and John and Paul and I you know and all came to in the room was was that the score itself should actually kind of live in the room very much in in the cinematic theatre where people sit and the film should be kind of more over there on the wall when it when it begins on the screen. And so yeah, division of labor, I do know, I mean, again, no one particularly wears, wears a very big hat. It's all about us all discussing and with our combined knowledge of what we're trying to do with the film, you know, working out the best way. There's no sort of division of departments. We don't have any

walls. And we don't have any walls and we don't have any, uh, borders between one department and another. We are, we are, we, we, we intuitively all understand the value of, of each of our processes informing the other.

And so Johnny, Johnny would be important. It would be important for Johnny to hear Mika's opinion about what he might be mixing. Uh, and it would be important for me to hear Mika's opinion about what he might be mixing. And it would be important for me to hear the opinion of Paul about what sounds Johnny's putting on. You know, we're all in it together, so we all build it together. And it's much richer for him. For example, the sequence of Hedwig and Mother Linna

sitting in the garden, going into the flowers and hearing the voice of the woman in the pain and into the red, that was something that was actually born on the final mixing stage. Or it wasn't born, but it was kind of delivered as an idea. We all had that, it was in a semblance of that form, but it was only kind of about a week and a half before we actually finished

that we did a picture edit on the mixing stage. Mika created some music on the mixing stage and that sequence as we see it now, which is fundamentally different to how it was. And that's how it came about through a collaborative, understanding that something was a bit missing and that we could all fix it right there and then. Aside from horror films, I couldn't think of too many examples in which the concept of distant sound was as critical

as the sound that we were hearing from the characters that we're looking at in the frame. And I'm just a novice, but I was curious if you looked at anything or thought about examples that were trying to render some of the same feeling that this movie accomplishes, or was it kind of an invention as you were figuring out how to make the film? Well, there are films where, well, it was, yes,

the last thing you said was most kind of literally the case, you know, that how will this film work? Like, what is it? We're on the perpetrator side of the wall with the pictures, and we're on the prisoner side of the wall with the sound. We have those two ingredients, and the intersection between those two ingredients is the experience of the film. So I don't think I've seen that in this context. Certainly, I don't I don't go and look for it. I don't Johnny does either. It's more what are we doing? You know, what are we doing? What do we need to do? But to your to your part of the question, the only two funny

because I have thought about this myself, the only two films that I've seen that were sound has a has a has such an important sort of off-screen presence. Well, most of the later films of Robert Bresson, number one, who was a pioneer of sound in the sense of it giving a much wider context to what the eye was actually seeing, in other words, what the camera had recorded. But more closer to our film, I would say possibly Winds of Desire, actually, by Wim Wenders,

and the importance of that interior sound. It's an interior sound, actually, but it's off-screen, if you like, in a sense. And that is sort of from beginning to end and that is I would say, I only thought of this the other day so it wasn't in my mind when we filmed it at all but just because I've been contemplating exactly the question you asked myself and the other one is Derek Jarman, Blue, Derek Jarman, a brilliant, brilliant artist, a British artist,

and he made a film called Blue when his eyesight was fading. So there is no, you're looking at a blue screen, but you're hearing, it's the sound that is giving you the pictures in your mind. And I suppose that is a remarkable piece of work. So, you know, yes, there are, we haven't identified, we've just, we've just found the right approach in our minds for what we were trying to achieve. And interestingly, in making it, you know, we, we actually kind of made the film that you see the family drama before we applied the other sound. And so and we definitely didn't know where we were going with that,

other than that it was going to be a key ingredient. So yeah, it's certainly more about exploring and trying than recreating everything we'd seen or whatever, or another use of it. Is that radically different from how you often work, Johnny? I mean, how frequent is that for you in terms of discovering the entire soundscape in the post process um how unusual is that um I mean it's

pretty unusual isn't it I mean it's it feels usual because uh you know because I've worked with John for so many years and I and I I know that's how we and I know that's how we do it. Yeah, that's how we do it. So so but I guess that's, you know, it's quite a different film. I mean, yeah, there are quite a lot of sound in this film is probably unique to this film. Right. Or absolutely. Yeah. I can't think of anywhere else where, you know, normally it would be, you know, it's great when sound is is written in the script and and it's great when sound is written in the script

and it's even better when sound in the script has adjectives applied to it because you know it's going to be more purposeful. But here it was way beyond anything that I've ever done before. Jonathan, it's interesting that you cite Wings of Desire. I think of the sound in that movie as almost operating inside the mind of an angel as opposed to the horrors of the real world that we hear in the film. But there is an aspect of the movie, at least from my perspective, that where the sound feels otherworldly. It feels unreal in some ways. And I know that you wanted to be accurate,

but also was there attention paid to making something that would deeply unsettle or that would seem like a sound that someone who'd never lived through something like that could hardly fathom? Well, I think that it's an impossible, the horrors, the atrocities of what happened in this and many other death camps is unfathomable. And visually, I would say it's unrepresentable, which left us with sound, left us with the sonics of atrocity and what actually a writer had termed ambient genocide in this context, which I thought was very astute. In other words, ambient genocide being something which is

nothing more than an ambience for, in this context, these people who are so disassociated from the horrors that they are perpetrating that it becomes ambient. And I think that that relationship between what you see and what you hear is, of course, designed to create a fundamentally difficult state of mind for the audience to grasp. Nauseating, I mean, I'm not really saying words that are going to encourage people to come to cinema, but what I mean by that is they are representing something. They are representing these atrocities and they have to be, uh, everything has to be so carefully considered, um,

and auditioned. And that's precisely what John has done. And the effect is, um, a kind of an overwhelming horror. So, and it's not a horror in the way that it's a genre, uh,

film by any stretch. Um, that would be, that would be grossly reductive to the point of the purpose of the film. But certainly horror in what one imagines, yeah. Johnny, I don't know how challenging projects are for you at this stage, but was there anything in particular in this film that was difficult to achieve or to realize? Credibility in the sound. I mean, just making sure that anything we put in was believable.

There's just such a huge difference between the real sound of, for example, someone in pain and that that isn't. How do you problem solve against, I mean, is it a trial and error process to making sure that something feels right? It is, certainly because the film absolutely rejects it when you try something on that that um it you know that lacks that that believability but um but yeah i mean it that's that's why it took a year you know to to to go around you know my team and i exploring you know the larger part of it is you know you can try taking actors to a you know a a disused concrete building and get the acoustics right and everything but if if someone's not actually in pain it's very hard to fake and so hence you know the need to to travel

around europe and to visit various places and and hope you know to be somewhere where someone is genuinely in pain or to you know to to uh to to experience um uh you know, to experience, you know, difficult situations in the world. And just to, I mean, that's why it took so long, really. That was the... You were gathering, the gathering of a kind of library of sound, really, from all sorts of sources and creating ones that you can't find. But, you know, if you go to a park on a Sunday or, you know, a centre of town in a late-night district,

you know, at 3am, or, you know, there are various places where you can go and, you know, hope is the wrong word, but, you know, but just to record and hear what things sound like credibly. And also an awful lot of research on the internet and understanding what the difference is between someone who's faking it and someone who isn't, basically. Gentlemen, we end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers

what is the last great thing they have seen. I'm quite curious if either of you have seen anything that you've enjoyed recently. Go on. I re-watched Airplane the other day. That is very different from the Zone of Interest. Yeah. Well, I needed to.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Boy, Airplane's top draw. That's brilliant. I would say I'm going to give you a non-film, if that's all right. That's fine. Which I've been to four times, and I'll keep going as soon as I get back to London. The Philip Guston exhibition at the Tate Modern in London is extraordinary. That's an exceptional example.

Those are probably the two most divergent answers to that question that I've ever had. But they're both pretty connected somehow to the film. Well, congratulations on the zone of interest. Thanks for talking to me, guys. I really appreciate it. Thank you very much. Nice one. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Very much. Nice one.

Thank you. Thanks. See you. Thank you to Jonathan Glaser, Johnny Byrne, and Joanna Robinson, and of course, Amanda Dobbins. And thanks to our producer, Bobby Wagner, for his work on this episode. Next week, we return with a new draft, this time focused on the movies of the oh-so-complicated year of 2020.

We'll see you then.