The Big Picture - ‘X,’ ‘Deep Water,’ ‘Turning Red,’ and 10 New Movies You Need to See Now

Episode Date: March 18, 2022

It’s a recommendations episode! Sean talks about 10 movies from 2022 that he likes, where you can watch them, and why you should (1:00). Spoiler alert, one of those movies is ‘X,’ the new horror movie from director Ti West. Ti joins Sean to talk about making his first horror film in nine years and why he isn’t done yet (38:00). Host: Sean Fennessey Guest: Ti West Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For as long as I've known the NBA, it's been a stars league. But even among the stars, there's an exclusive club. Russell and Dr. J. Bird and Magic. Jordan. Kobe. They're all part of a select group that paved the way for the NBA superstar of today. And some even shared secrets with each other along the way. Join me as I trace the

evolution of the NBA icon from the early days. And he said, tell me, Pat, who is Julius Irving? I said, well, Vince, he's the Babe Ruth of basketball. Through the years of icons. We noticed that everything he did looked like Michael. To the moves, to the walk, to the talk. It was like an ongoing joke. All the way to today. From Spotify and the Ringer Podcast Network, I'm Jackie McMullin. And this is the Icons Club. The series premieres on March 18th on the Book of Basketball 2.0 feed.

I'm Sean Fennessey and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about the good stuff. We've been tied up on this show lately, breaking down the Oscars, running some pre-recorded episodes with Amanda out, throwing a lot of energy into Batman. I've lost sight of why I like doing this show in the first place, which is sharing good vibes about movies that I love. So we're doing a recommendation episode today. Just me talking about 10 movies from 2022 that I dug, where you can watch them and why you should. Spoiler alert, one of those movies is X. This is the new horror movie from

director Ty West. It's his first feature film in six years. It's a doozy. Fair warning, you may want to check this one out before listening to this pod. Ty does drop a major bomb about the film in the conversation, but this movie is freaking awesome. So I hope you check it out and I hope you listen to my conversation with him. Okay, let's go to the recommendations. Here's the thing. I feel like we've spent the last three or four years on this podcast bemoaning that they no longer make movies for grownups or genre movies that I care about and I like. And I feel like maybe we overstated things, believe it or not,

because movies are sort of back. I'm going to chill out on the doom saying just for once, because all of the 10 movies that I'm going to talk about here are all original stories. They're all pretty widely accessible, either in theaters or on streaming services right now. I don't have a ton to complain about. On top of all the movies I'm going to talk about here, I think it's okay to embrace the state of things at the moment. New stuff just keeps making itself available. Amanda, when she's on the show, is always loudly proclaiming, let people see your movie. Scream 5, aka Scream, which came out just two months ago, is already available on Paramount+, which is just mind-blowing. You don't have to wait more than two months for new movies that did well at the box office to see them on a streaming service,

which is amazing. Death on the Nile, another movie that I talked about briefly with Joanna a few weeks ago, is coming to Hulu on March 29th. Dune is back finally on HBO Max. So there's a lot of stuff from 2021 and 2022 that's available that I'm sure you've heard about or read about. But let's talk about these 10. This is a pretty solid list and it didn't take long. And theoretically, we're just coming out of dumpuary and we're getting some good things. So I'll start with a full-throated recommendation of a new original film streaming on Netflix. Of course, I'm talking about The Atom Project. I'm just kidding. I'm not recommending The Atom Project on this podcast. The Atom Project is really bad, guys. It's Ryan Reynolds and Sean Levy reteaming after Free Guy and it's not good. So don't watch it. You probably already watched it by this point. It's the number one movie by far on Netflix at the moment. And I know

that these movies make people really happy, but it really did not make me happy and was incredibly derivative, fake Amblin BS. So no. The first movie I'm going to talk about actually is Turning Red. I'm sure you've heard of that by now. This is probably the most well-received movie of the year thus far. It's written and directed by Domei Shi. It's available now on Disney+, and it's a Pixar movie. It's a slightly different kind of Pixar movie. Of course, it's about a young person and how they're engaging with the world and how their parents are freaking out about how a young person is engaging with the world, but it's a slightly more mature story. It's a slightly different style than we're used to seeing from Pixar. There's obviously a huge anime influence, which has been talked about quite a bit.

Domei Shi, you may have heard about. She was the writer and director of a Pixar short called Bao, which came out a few years ago, which was an incredible film and kind of challenging by Pixar and children's movie standards and had this somewhat upsetting ending. And I think kind of paved a path for what Turning Red was going to turn out to be. Turning Red is focused on this girl, Mai Lee, who is 13 years old and she's kind of torn between being her mother's obedient daughter and everything that is happening to her at the age of 13. You can imagine what that is. She's going through some major changes. She's exiting adolescence and

entering womanhood and she turns into a giant red panda. So this is a very odd premise for a movie, I realize. It's also a very fun premise for a movie. And while it sounds goofy, it actually takes the subject matter very seriously without talking down to its audience, without being preachy or moralizing. It's very sensitive. It's very whimsical. It looks beautiful. It has incredible voice work from Sandra Oh and Orion Lee, who we talked about a lot when First Cow came out a few years back. And Mai is voiced by a newcomer named Rosalie Chang, and she's wonderful too. The other thing is the story is set in 2002, which is a really smart choice. Obviously, Domei Shi did this because she has a little bit of familiarity with coming of age at this time,

but it allows her to focus on some of the fascinations at that time, including boy bands. Now, obviously, I'm not a huge boy bands fan, but the film features an original creation that approximates something close to NSYNC or Backstreet Boys. And the original songs for this boy band are written by Billie Eilish and Phineas, and they're really good and really close to what good boy band songs do sound like. And so there's a sense of care in this movie and a sense of attention to detail from the action sequences. And yes, there are action sequences in this movie to the sense of humor, to the way that Mai's friends are portrayed that really like elevates this. And this is really my favorite

Pixar in a long, long time, probably since Inside Out. And it has a very similar feeling. The other thing that's happening here, of course, is that I'm a dad now. There's an incredible dad moment in this movie where Orion Lee, who plays Mai's father, has a conversation with her that is crushing and very sincere and very deep. And lo and behold, the first Pixar movie to come along since Alice was born, definitely grabbed me by the throat. And thinking about it with a young girl having to deal with the world

is very upsetting. It's something I think about all the time. It seems like a hard time to be a young woman. So this is a really powerful rendition of that kind of a story. So if you are interested, you can watch this movie now on Disney+, which is wild.

You know, it's a little bit controversial that this movie is available on Disney Plus. This is the third consecutive Pixar film to go to Disney Plus. And there's been some outcry. And obviously, there's been a huge fracas between the state of Florida and that terrible law that they're trying to pass there and what that means for Disney. And Bob Chapek, the chairman of CEO, has come under significant fire for his comments about that and has had to walk back some things. And the Pixar employees in particular really spoke out against his comments and really demanded that he stand with them. And obviously, that was a brave moment and the right thing for those employees to do.

And I feel like that incident, as is so often the case with culture, has overshadowed the movie in some respect. And the conversation about films going straight to streaming overshadowed, I think some respect, you know, and the conversation about films going straight to streaming, overshadowed, I think, honestly, the greatness of Turning Red. And so I just want to say, watch this movie as you should. Bring an open heart to it. Maybe watch it with your kids.

Watch it with your partner. It'll make you feel better. Okay, now here's a movie that maybe will make you feel better, but not in exactly the same way. I mentioned X. I mentioned Ty West. A little background on Ty. So Ty is one of the first filmmakers I ever interviewed. I mentioned

this to him when we spoke later in the episode. I talked to him about 10 years ago, maybe more than that at this point for GQ for a movie that he had made called The Innkeepers, which was kind of a throwback to a haunted hotel story. And this is something he did a lot in the late 2000s and early 2010s, he would riff on previously existing horror tropes. So he made an amazing movie called House of the Devil, which is a sort of babysitter in peril movie that I highly recommend. Really one of the more stylish movies of the early 2000s. And then he made a movie after that called The Sacrament, which was a sort of cult riff, like what happens when you join a cult, kind of Jim Jones style story. It was also, I thought, kind of underrated, honestly. And then he made a Western called In the Valley of Violence.

And he didn't make a movie for like seven years. This is his first movie in a long time. It is a horror movie, a return to horror. It's really clever. It's almost satirical in the way that it's told. It's set in 1973. When I spoke to Alex Ross Perry on the pod a few weeks back, we talked about Texas Chainsaw Massacre and how that movie doesn't do ultimately what you need a movie like this to do, which is the unbridled carnage, the winking sense of humor, the sense of place, the absurdity colliding with the real life terror. And the other thing about this movie is, you know, and Ty talks very smartly about this. It's basically about a bunch of kids

who drive down to an old farmhouse in the 70s in Texas to shoot a porno. And it's really lurid and very purposefully lurid and very self-aware about how lurid it is. And, you know, Ty points out that porn and horror are really the two edges, the fringes of the extreme. That was what Alex and I talked about on that episode too. And this is a movie that recognizes what they have in common and where they meet. Also has incredible twists. It's really, really fun. Awesome kills. Great actors that you've been wanting to see in something like this. This is by far the best that Kid Cudi has ever been in a movie. Mia Goth is really the star of the film. Perhaps you've seen her in one of my faves,

A Cure for Wellness, where she is having a similar freak out kind of role. Brittany Snow doing something totally different, unlike Pitch Perfect or anything you've ever seen her in. And Jenna Ortega, who is emerging as, I think, the most prominent young scream queen at the movies right now. She was just in Scream 5. She's in another movie I'll talk about very shortly, but she's a really talented actress. This movie is awesome. It's only in movie theaters, which I know for some people is very frustrating, but the only other most reliable thing aside from superhero movies at the movies right now is a horror movies. I hope this movie does well. It's from A24. There's news of more to come from Ty West, And so this movie probably needs to do well for that to really pop.

So I encourage you to check that out. Okay, I'm going to very briefly mention a movie that I believe you should watch. Now, this movie, this is Deepwater. We've been talking about Deepwater for over two years on this podcast. Deepwater is super important to me and Amanda Dobbins. Now, I've had a chance to see the movie.

I don't think Amanda's had a chance to see it yet. I'm not going to go deep on this. I promise. In fact, we'll go really deep when Amanda comes back, because this is like, this is like the meeting point. This is the centerpiece of our interests in movies.

And I just want to say like, Bobby, you've been, you've been observing us talking about this for a long, long time. Are you excited about Deepwater? You talking solo about Deepwater on a podcast feels wrong for a lot of reasons, to be honest. I'm not going to say too much, I promise. Number one, because Amanda's not here and because it is the nexus of your interest points.

But number two, because it's you talking solo about a sex movie between Ben Affleck and... Should I just read the screenplay live here on the podcast? Do you think that would go well? I think it would rate highly. It might be the final podcast that rated in any way for you and I here. Bobby, let me just tell you, Deepwater is so weird. It's so weird. Okay, if you haven't heard us talk about this before,

it's an erotic thriller. It comes from Adrian Lyne. He is, of course, the king of the erotic thriller. His previous films, Fatal Attraction, Nine and a Half Week attraction nine and a half weeks indecent proposal unfaithful he's done it all but he hasn't made a movie in 20 years he's 81 years old this is his first movie in 20 years this movie stars ben affleck and anna de armas as a couple who get a little kinky and things get out of hand as you might imagine this movie is streaming right now on Hulu. It's not in a movie theater. It went straight to Hulu. I will say, I don't want to spoil anything, but it is borderline incomprehensible. It has been clearly edited by someone holding two rocks. However, it's really, really, really fun. And it's exactly, exactly what Amanda and I are

complaining about all the time, which is like, just get some really bright, shining movie stars and let them do wild shit on screen. So that's all I'll say about it. I encourage everyone to check it out. Whenever Amanda is back, we will go deep on it. We'll have a lot of laughs because it's just an absolute blast. Affleck in his bag. Check out Deepwater. Okay, moving on. The next movie is Windfall. This is a movie that maybe does not have as much noise around it, but it's really good and is dropping on Netflix Friday this week. And it's directed by Charlie McDowell, who's been a guest on this show in the past and will be a guest on the show later, I think in April after the Oscars to talk about the movie a little bit more. Great cast, very small three-hander, Lily Collins, Jesse Plemons, and Jason Segel.

Segel has collaborated before with McDowell on a movie called The Discovery. McDowell also made a really good movie called The One I Love with Mark Duplass and Elizabeth Moss a handful of years back. He specializes in this kind of single location, low-key, looming dread kind of a movie. The premise of this one is really clever. It's about a man who breaks into a tech billionaire's empty vacation home. Then things really go sideways when the mogul and his wife arrive for a last minute getaway. It starts out as one kind of a movie and shifts into another kind of movie. Definitely has some big ideas about class and privilege, but is mostly just a kind of Hitchcockian setup to have people escaping and then failing to escape and then escaping and

then failing to escape. then escaping and then failing to escape. This is also a kind of thing that we complain we don't get anymore and they're giving it to us. And so I'm not going to look the gift horse in the mouth. I'm going to celebrate it. I'm going to encourage you to watch it. McDowell is super interesting to me. I think he has a sense of modest scale and he has not taken on any big, massive, noisy movies. He's also, much like Ty West, had a kind of an interregnum between movies. And in that time, just like Ty, he directed a lot of TV. And it's interesting to watch some of these filmmakers, late 30s, early 40s, who are negotiating this moment in movie history where it's not as easy

to get some of this small stuff made. And so in the interim, people are using the opportunity to make a little money working in TV and to learn a little bit more about how to do their jobs better. And you can see these filmmakers improving in real time. Ty, he hasn't made a movie in six or seven years. And you can see his craft is way, way higher, way more sophisticated. You know, he's got a way, a bigger sense of dread and he was already really good at dread. The same is true for Charlie. He talked a little bit when we spoke about how he blocked this movie, which all takes place in one house in Ojai and how he, he and a cinematographer basically acted out the entire movie walking through this house for days. And it's really interesting. And you

can see the sense of care that goes into this, this it also you know it stars his his now wife lily collins who has emerged as a big star in the last few years because of emily in paris this is a very very different performance from emily in paris i assure you um so interesting movie windfall check it out it's a small thriller but it's a good one okay so before we started recording wax was like, me and my partner need something fun to watch that makes us feel good that we can agree on. Are you guys struggling to find movies, Bobby? It's not that we struggle to find movies. It's that Phoebe prefers TV as a format.

So I am often compromising wanting to watch movies in favor of the preferred format, which I also like. So it is more diplomatic for us to watch that. Now, the movies that we are often looking for are like either like edge of your seat kind of thrillers but not too super violent okay or that kind of like whimsical irreverent funny vibe that keeps your attention the dialogue the quippiness however not like the netflix whimsical irreverent description that they put underneath every single movie that they make in-house there. Like an actually whimsical

irreverent movie. Just because you put those words in your film's description doesn't mean that it actually simulates the experience when you're watching it. Yeah, exactly. Completely true. Okay, this is as good as I can do in that respect. I don't think I have a perfect answer for you, but there's a really, really good 2022 movie that came out in movie theaters and is already available to rent on Apple and Vudu and Amazon and all the places where you rent movies. It's called Dog.

It's the first new movie from Channing Tatum in a long time. I don't know why Channing Tatum necessarily took a break from movies for five or six years. There's a recurring theme here. All these people who came back to movies after not making them for a while, maybe that's why there's some good movies around right now. Channing Tatum has never directed a movie before. He co-directed this with his friend and producing partner, Reed Carroll. And this movie also was kind of a hit in movie theaters, surprisingly, because it's also an original story. No IP attached to it. No big brain concept. It's basically just about an army ranger

who is trying to get a gig and in order to do so, takes on a ranger dog to travel to a soldier's funeral. And so it's a road movie, a journey movie, and also like a Turner and Hooch buddy movie. Dog movie?

You're crushing it right now. It's a dog movie. I know. Well, you have a dog. You know what it's a road movie, a journey movie, and also like a Turner and Hooch buddy movie. Dog movie? You're crushing it right now. It's a dog movie. I know. Well, you have a dog. You know what it's like. I know it's not always easy to have a dog. And it's not always easy to have this dog. This dog in this movie presents a great many challenges

for Army Ranger Briggs. Yeah. Yeah. I think you'll be able to tap into something. The movie is, I don't know if the movie is whimsical, but it is irreverent. It basically just features Channing Tatum in dialogue with a dog for two hours. And it works.

It weirdly works really well. Channing Tatum, obviously low-key, very underrated comic actor. And even though the themes are pretty heavy in this movie, there is a significant death. There is a lot of mourning. There is like trauma, PTSD in the aftermath of serving in the military. It's pretty fun and pretty lighthearted. And there's a lot of hijinks. And it's not overmanaged.

They're on one quest. It's just to get to this funeral. And everything that happens along the way is just episodic. And you could see in a different world, this being an annoying TV show, like a six-episode series about a guy with his dog. And I'm so glad it's not that. It's the worst.

It would have been terrible. It would have been so annoying if it was that exact Netflix thing that you're describing. And it's the opposite of that. So MGM put this movie out in February. Surprisingly, I think it performed very, very well at the box office alongside a couple of other movies that had been released at that time, even before the Batman came out. And I think that this is the movie that made everyone feel like maybe things are going to be okay with this business

because this is the kind of movie that historically did do pretty good, 50 to 75 to $100 million business. Big movie star right in the center. Easy to understand premise. I think the movie, at the risk of politicizing this conversation, I do think the movie is playing well

in like the red states. You know, it's a movie about an army Ranger. It's a movie about a guy and his dog. Yeah. So it does, it feels like it is playing all over, you know, like it's the whole country can enjoy this movie in a way.

It's not, it's not terribly controversial. And I think I was just surprised by what a light touch it had, because if you read the log line, it seems a little bit heavier than it actually is. So I, I think you and you and phoebe should watch it i think please tell her stop watching so much television that's not i'm not

excited about that i foresee a meme me tweeting out oh my god he's just like me about channing tatum trying to get the dog to behave in stressful situations like now that we've moved back to new york and my dog is afraid of all construction equipment that's ever been put on the planet, I foresee that meme coming in the future. So I'll let you know. Do you have a beautiful boutique SUV? Because that's a big plot point in this film is Channing Tatum's car and what the dog does to his car. I have the most popular SUV on the road, the Nissan Rogue.

Wow. So you're kind of like Army Ranger Briggs. I describe myself as kind of like Army Ranger Briggs. I describe myself as kind of like Army Ranger Briggs to people that I meet in bars. Okay, well, check out Dog. Let me know what you think. Next movie I'm going to talk about is Fresh.

Got a lot of requests for talk about this. It actually did come up. Amy Nicholson in our Sundance episode recommended this movie. It hit Hulu, I think, on March 4th. And so it got a little bit subsumed in the Batman wave of coverage. It's directed by Mimi Cave.

It's streaming on Hulu right now. It's incredible how these movies premiere at Sundance and they're on Hulu within five weeks. It stars Daisy Edgar Jones, who people may have seen in Normal People, which was the greatest testimony to Irish hotness that's ever been made. And Sebastian Stan, who is becoming a huge star.

He was also just playing Tommy Lee in Pam and Tommy, a TV show that I did not enjoy very much. And he's, of course, been in the MCU as the Winter Soldier and a number of other things. This is an interesting movie with a great premise, solid execution, controversial ending that I think may have disappointed some people. I thought it worked pretty well, though. Effectively, it's about the horrors of modern dating seen through the eyes of a young woman who is battling to endure her new boyfriend's peccadillo's interests, appetites.

I don't want to give away too much. I would encourage you, if this is the first you are hearing about this movie, to not read anything about the movie. Just watch the movie. I don't want to say too much about it. I don't think it's helpful to over-explain because if you hear the premise for real in depth, it might not actually even be worth seeing the movie. And this is actually

something I wanted to talk about because it's like a challenge of not just doing a show like this, but engaging in movie culture because high concept movies are bigger than ever because they are enticing, I think, to streaming services. These sort of like single line, boom, blow your mind ideas. And while fresh, I know it took a long time for the screenwriter of this movie and for the director to make it happen. And I think it required Adam McKay's hyper object to come in and produce the movie to get it off the ground. I don't know what to do with stuff like this on the podcast. Actually, Bobby, what do you think we should do with these movies that we really want to talk about, but if you say more than 12 words about, you kind of effectively ruin for the

audience? Have you thought about this at all? Yeah, I have. I also thought about this recently because someone, a podcaster that I follow on Twitter was like, I just recently started watching new movies again for the first time. Like I had been on an eight month delay. So I didn't have to think about the fact that I was maybe spoiling stuff for people. But was it KOC?

Who was the podcaster? No, it's not. It was Mike Duncan of the Revolutions podcast. The Revolutions podcast that I shouted out on our Free Guy episode and multiple people were like, what is the Russian Revolution podcast? So I've at least cultivated a certain type of reply guy. I have thought about it

because it is very challenging from a programming perspective, especially for movies that you and Amanda and Chris have really built up on the podcast because then people want it immediately when it comes out. Like I think of Licorice pizza as an example. But I think being transparent about, oh, we're only going to talk about it up to this level of detail.

And then in the future, we're going to get fully into the weeds with it. I think it's probably the way to do it. And if you are a burgeoning podcaster trying not to spoil stuff for your listeners or you're going to Twitter right away, I think maybe just giving people a slight warning like not hitting people over the head with the immediate details right away is probably the way to do it from my so some some of my favorite movie podcasts will literally make a calendar and share it with the audience and say like april 12th the fresh episode. April 15th, the blank episode. Do you think that there's a benefit to doing that?

You know me, I'm like over-scheduling everything. I know where everything is going. And if the calendar is already there, it's just not publicly available. The calendar's there through like, you know, September of this year already. Yeah, probably. Let us know if we should do, like, listeners,

let us know if they want to see when we're going to talk about stuff. Yeah, just flagging dates, or on the pod or off the pod, where people can then gear themselves up. Because I think, you know, like a lot of people, I just go into my podcast app and I queue the next episode of my favorite podcast that is available. And I don't always look in great detail what they're going to talk about because I trust them to talk about something that I like. And if it just happens that it's a movie that I haven't seen yet, then I have to kind of stop 15 minutes in. And as a completionist, like a tried and true completionist, it bothers me if I don't finish

something all the way through. That's not the best experience. Yeah, we're completionists here too. Completion rate is very important here at Spotify Incorporated. I don't even know if that's the full title of this company, but we'd love you to finish our episodes. So I want everybody to feel like they can fully engage with the conversations and not have to skip stuff because they didn't get to it. There's obviously going to be movies that some people don't care about, but Fresh is an interesting one and people should check it out. And I particularly am looking forward to seeing what Daisy Edgar Jones does because I think she's a very promising young star. Okay, next movie. I think CR is going to be mad at me that I'm

talking about this because I know he loves this movie and he was like, yo, when you talk about this, have me on the show. But I didn't invite him to this episode. Sorry, CR. CR, going to be mad at me that I'm talking about this because I know he loves this movie. And he was like, yo, when you talk about this, have me on the show. But I didn't invite him to this episode. Sorry, CR. CR, I'll be back on the show soon. I promise. I know everybody loves Chris. This movie is called No Exit. It's on Hulu right now. It's directed by someone named Damien Power. I'd never heard of Damien Power. I'd never heard of many of the people in this cast, including Havana Rose Liu, who's the star. It does feature a couple of familiar faces, Dale Dickey, who people will definitely recognize when they see her. Dennis Haysbert, unmistakable on the screen. Very, again, very simple premise. This is like an old school programmer. It's a 90 minute thriller,

slowly creeping towards a very brutal and exciting climax. So low stakes movie watching, the kind of thing you probably would have seen on Cinemax like 20 years ago, or would have seen in like a grindhouse in Times Square like 40 or 50 years ago. Here's the premise. College student on her way home from visiting her mom gets stuck with a group of people at a rest stop during a blizzard. Then things go awry when the young woman discovers a kidnapped child in a car belonging to one of the people inside. And then there is this struggle to determine who is the kidnapper. So again, very Hitchcockian premise, single location, very tense movie that kind of explodes into this grisly finale. Really, really fun. I, again, am saying

the they don't make them like they used to thing has been debunked because they made this movie. Now, I think this movie was produced by 20th Century Fox and then shuttled to Hulu in the aftermath of the Disney merger. It's a little hard to navigate what is a Fox movie, what is a Disney movie. We're coming just about to the end of that. But some of these, you know, 21st Century Studios is still producing movies now. Searchlight is still producing movies now. But they're all doing it under the banner of Disney. It's a little bit confusing. I don't really know how a lot of that stuff is organized, but it made me feel like there actually should be a wing, an arm of these studios that just makes movies that are like this. That just makes movies that play on Shudder. That just makes movies that play on the kind of genre aisle or shelf on Hulu. Because I know there's a serious audience

for them. I am the audience. Chris is the audience. Many, many people are into movies like this, and they're not that hard to sell to people. You can describe them in one sentence on the carousel on the site, and they have repeatable value. I think for Chris, they're like a wallpaper movie in a weird way. So this movie is called No Exit. Very simple. Very good. All right, next one. I don't think I've had a chance to talk about this one. I just wanted to give it a quick shout out. I revisited it last night briefly. It's called Lucy and Desi. And it's a documentary. It's directed by Amy Poehler. It's, of course, about Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz who are probably the biggest creative and business partnership in the history of Hollywood they built Desilu Productions in

addition to you know creating and and starring in I Love Lucy and many other things over the years I just I think it's a good counterpoint to being the Ricardos which Amanda and I were really tough on during award season which you know I thought just really mediocre. And I thought went to great pains to create a sense of mystery about the creativity between these two people, even though it showed practically how they made their show. The movie is actually quite different. The movie spans their entire life. It's not like a one week in the life of Lucy and Desi. It's about their entire relationship, really.

And it's a very standard documentary. It's a lot of archival footage, a lot of photographs, a lot of interviews with loved ones and experts. It's not groundbreaking formally by any means, but it's a very, very good snapshot of two deeply creative and deeply organized people coming together to make something special. And love happens between them. But the love kind of happens in between the work. And when the love ends, the work continues. And there's not a lot of stories that are like this. And I just thought it was a really fascinating portrayal of something that you don't see

that often. And I think you tend to forget like Desi Arnaz, immigrant, came here from Cuba and then ultimately became like one of the five most powerful people in Hollywood for a stretch there. Lucille Ball, major visionary, powerful woman in the 1950s and 60s in Hollywood, probably doesn't get enough credit for that, honestly, despite the fact that she is hugely well-known and beloved for her work on TV. It's a very standard movie. It's on Amazon right now. It's meant to be like kind of a companion piece to Being the Ricardos. If you haven't seen Being the Ricardos right now, I want you to just skip it and just watch this.

I feel like you'll learn more. You'll get deeper into their lives. You'll understand them better. And you'll learn a little something more than likely about the history of Hollywood. So that's Lucy and Desi. Okay, Bobby, have you seen I Want You Back? Are you familiar with this one? I have not.

I have not seen it yet, no. Okay, I'm excited to tell you about it. I wonder if Amanda has seen this. This is a movie that is streaming right now on Amazon. It stars Jenny Slate and Charlie Day, two of my faves. And I didn't really, I don't know where this movie came from. I guess it was developed specifically for Amazon. It's directed by someone named Jason Orley, whose work I'm not familiar with.

It's a romantic comedy. It's like a traditional romantic comedy. It's a little bit zanier than your Rob Reiner, Nora Ephron romantic comedy, but here's the premise. So Peter and Emma, that's Charlie Day and Jenny Slate, are total strangers. When they meet, they realize they were both dumped on the same weekend. Their commiseration turns into a mission when they see that each of their ex-partners have happily moved on to new romances. And then they work together to upend those romances. It's like Friends with Benefits meets Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. It's not that cool, but it's a classic three-star, that was a nice movie.

Some good jokes, really really really high-end performances really really dependent on the charisma of its stars not a flashy movie very clever at times um some really good co-stars uh gina rodriguez is in this movie scott eastwood and easily the best scott eastwood performance i've ever seen which is not saying that much but he's always playing like a grim-faced man wearing like a utility gear and a machine gun. And in this movie, he's just like a bro.

He's like a, he's a trainer and he's really, really funny. And Manny Jacinto from The Good Place who's super funny. Oh God,

I love him. He's the best. He's so good. He plays a, a children's theater director. So he like, he coaches like six-year-olds about how to star in like a, in musical, and he takes himself so seriously.

He's wonderful in this movie. Well, that's what you do in between episodes of The Big Picture, right? Which is why you connected so deeply to this movie. Wait till Alice is old enough. And I'm directing her in Streetcar, and I'm directing her in Three Sisters. We're working on Chekhov together. And what else? As You Like It on Twelfth Night. We're going to run the gamut. This is a really simple movie. you know we're working on checkoff together and uh what else as you like it you know on 12th night

what we're gonna do we're gonna do the run the gamut um this is a really simple movie it's a very it's a very enjoyable goes down easy kind of a movie um it's not as you know sharply well made as something like dog which is like hollywood making an original story that's accessible for all audiences but it's it's a solid version of something that once again, I think in our dark universe could be a mediocre TV show and is instead a pretty solid movie. So that's I Want You Back. Okay, last one is a bit serious. And I don't know why we didn't get a chance to talk about this one because it was released the longest ago. It came out in January. It actually premiered well over a year ago at South by Southwest, but because South by Southwest was not held in person, people didn't really get a chance to see this movie. It's called The Fallout. It's on John Ortiz. And it's effectively about a young woman

who after a school shooting is experiencing PTSD, experiencing some depression and looking a little bit more closely at her life and how she wants to live it. And this is a very, this is a young girl. It's like a 16 year old girl who's at the center of the story. But it's a very intimate and sophisticated portrayal of someone struggling with something

and trying to figure out who they want to be. And coming of age movie is a very, that conjures like, I think, American graffiti and Dazed and Confused, maybe Almost Famous. It has a very specific stripe to it. It's not often about women. This is a really good story about a young woman. And it's not often about people who are struggling with something deep. And obviously, what Jenna Ortega's character goes through in this movie is extremely complicated

and requires a sensitive touch. The movie is, you know, it does have some lightness and some funniness. And when Julie Bowen is in a movie, she's obviously going to bring a sensitivity and a sense of humor to the work. But I thought this was like a really, maybe not a perfect movie by any means, but a really good sign of a promising young filmmaker. So I'm really excited to see what Megan Park does. I think this is a really quality movie on HBO Max. Bob, that's 10 movies that I just suggested to the people.

I think only one of them is in movie theaters. Everything else you can watch at home. I'm trying to provide a service here. Do you think I did a good job? As always, you're in the bag for the streamers. never support theaters it's not about that it's not it's not about go see x i'm talking about x with ty west in like a minute it's in theaters it's awesome at least four of these movies i'm with i'd be willing to watch tonight so i think that you provided a service yeah four out of ten you're going to the hall of fame that's ted williams

i love it four out of ten, you're Russell Westbrook. Oh, wow. Wow. That's extremely mean. If you know anything, I got to just say. I do know. I know exactly who you are and what you were blogging about in 2015. I'm in my glory with the Westbrook stuff right now.

This is really absolutely hilarious to me. Four out of 10 is solid. Do you think the listeners would agree? Two out of five ongoing on recommendations? I probably would be out of work if I only hit on two out of five

permanently, don't you think? I think most listeners probably you hit higher than four out of ten. Okay, you just not, you don't think I have bad taste. The considerations of

what I would watch tonight, not like after 1 a.m. after Phoebe has already gone to bed. Like I'd watch this over dinner. Okay, so you did good. Thanks, Bobby. I'm going toebe has already gone to bed. Like I'd watch this over dinner. Okay. So you did good.

Thanks, Bobby. I'm going to recap these 10 movies really quickly. You ready? So Turning Red. It's on Disney Plus. New Pixar movie. X. It's in theaters right now.

Great horror movie from Ty West. Deep Water. It's on Hulu. You got to watch this because we're going to have a long conversation about it on the pod. You got to watch Deep Water. Just trust me. Windfall. It's on Netflix right now. Really clever thriller. Dog. It's available for rent at home or in movie theaters. Heartwarming, spirited, slightly ridiculous, but pretty good Channing Tatum and a dog road movie. Fresh. Quality thriller horror movie

about the perils of dating. It's available on Hulu right now. No Exit, also on Hulu. Another thriller, different tonality, really strong performance from the star Havana Rose Liu and a great premise. Lucy and Desi, documentary on Amazon about Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. I Want You Back, above average romantic comedy on Amazon Prime. And The Fallout, which is a very sincere drama on HBO Max about a young woman. Okay. So also next week in theaters, we get the best movie I've seen this year by far, which is Daniel Kwan and Daniel Shiner. It's everything, everywhere, all at once. I'm going to talk to those guys about this movie. This thing is freaking mind-blowing,

Bobby. I absolutely loved it. It does all the things that IP movies do that are great and none of the things that IP movies do that are annoying. It is an original story, major scale, depth, beauty, heart. I fucking love this movie. So I hope people will check it out. I want you to check it out too, okay? I promise I will. Okay, now let's go to my conversation with Ty West.

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. Very excited to have Ty West on the show. First time on the show, though we were just talking about you on the show recently with our mutual friend Alex Ross-Perry. He was really excited about X. He encouraged me to see X. I saw X. I loved X. I'm glad you're here. I gotta say, I'm curious why it's been six years, though, since you've made a movie as kick-ass as X. I'm glad you're here. I got to say, I'm curious why it's been six years, though,

since you've made a movie as kick-ass as X. So maybe you can tell me what you've been up to in those six years. It's funny. I didn't think about that until I made this movie and everybody started asking me. So I've been thinking a lot about it lately. The short answer is that, well, it's been even longer. It's been almost 10 years since I made a horror movie. And that was because I was very fortunate to make a lot of horror movies in a row. And I think I had a good run personally for myself. And I was worried that if I kept making horror movies, I would just repeat myself. And it's like two years of trauma making a movie.

So the idea of like doing that and doing something you know how to do, and you're standing there on set going, I already know how to do this or worse doing something that you're not interested in. Like I don't want to make a career out of people opening medicine cabinets and closing it and there being something scary behind them. So I felt like I needed a break and I made Valley of Violence, which I was very happy making.

And that was a good break. And then someone called and said, do you want to do a television show? And it had been however long it had been of my life making movies and no one had called me and offered me anything ever once ever so I was just so grateful to be asked to dance but I was like I'd love to do that and then I did it and I had a great time and it's a different job it's a little bit more of like a consulting job than it is like making

your own movie but I don't mean that pejoratively. It is like creatively more or less. I've gotten to do everything I wanted with the exception of two shows I've done out of the 17. I'd say what ends up on TV is 85 to 90% of what I turn in. I get to work with a lot of people that I might not hire or cast myself. And then I get that experience of like, well, maybe I should do that. And what is it like? I get to put an enormous amount of reps in on set just to get better at the craft of filmmaking. And then I find it really

enjoyable because I made everything myself for so long. Production is not particularly intimidating to me. So being dropped into it is not such a big deal. And I see the showrunners or the creators or whatnot, and they're stressed because they're balancing this entire thing. And I'm like, oh, I'm you in my other life. This is what it looks like. How can I help? And then I'm like, oh, you want it to be like this. I can help you do that. And that's really satisfying. And it's been really fun to do it. And when you make your own movie, you have to think of an idea. You have to like write the idea. You have to go get the money. The money falls apart.

You have to go get more money. Then you have to make the movie. And that's a nightmare. And then you have to like promote the movie and all that. A TV show is, can you be on a plane on Monday? So I gave it a shot. So I did that. And I, you know, five years goes by pretty quick because I went, I did like six a year.

So I was just going from one to another. And then to wrap all that up, I got to a place where I had an idea for a horror movie. Um, and I felt really sharp from being on set so much that I felt like now's a good time to do it. And then there was a pandemic. Okay. I have some questions about that, but I'm curious in that five-year window where you're making a lot of TV, does it feel like that time is passing? Do you feel like... Are you transitioning into how you imagine what your career is? Do you feel like you're missing opportunities to make things? Are you getting told no on things? Or were you just fully locked into those jobs you kept getting offered over and over again? No, I was super busy. So in those five years, I sold three television shows that I wrote myself, two movies that I wrote

myself. And then I did those 17 shows. So I was working like crazy, like 24 seven. That's all I was doing is doing things. And I was getting better because I was writing a lot more scripts and I was doing a lot of the shows. So to me, it wasn't like being stuck in that. It was like, I'm just like, Oh, I have an idea for TV show. Oh, so-and-so bought it. This this is great and then you write half the series and you're like i'm gonna make a tv show and then the head of that company gets a job at another company and the new person that comes in is like oh we're not making shows like that anymore and you're like fuck and so then you know then you write another one and then the same thing happens because the things take a long time um at any point in the process the changeover of people at the top could mean it happens

or it doesn't happen. So I was trying to move into TV and do my... My goal at the time was to write and direct every episode of my own series, which is an undertaking. And so that's kind of what I was working on doing. So why did X hit? What happened? Why was this the one that went through?

Well, A24 and I have known each other for a long time, and we'd always sort of threatened to make a movie together, but never done it. And I think mostly because maybe they were interested in making a horror movie, and I was not interested in making a horror movie. And then I started to think, well, how come I

haven't been too excited about a horror movie in a while? What is missing from what I used to really like about it? And I felt a little bit like everything was soft and i also felt like you know plot was very important in horror movies but craft wasn't as much and of course this is not you know there's great movies like raw is amazing there's plenty of great movies that were coming out but generally speaking there was a lack of what i felt connected to whenever I first dug it. And so I never made a slasher movie. I was trying to think of like, well, if I made a slasher movie, like how could I take

something like, you know, quote unquote, lowbrow, like sex and violence kind of stuff and try to do something crafty, like higher brow with it, as pretentious as that may sound. And I started formulating the idea. I wanted to make a movie that really like showed off filmmaking. Um, so I wanted to make a movie about people making a movie. I think horror and porn have a sort of odd symbiotic relationship of being like the outsiders of the movie business that you could actually like become

part of the movie business without all of the things you need to be in the movie business. That was charming to me. And I thought if I could make a movie that showed people trying to make a movie, that would give the audience a crash course on what it's like. So that way, when they're seeing the things that I'm doing in the movie, they might have a little bit more of an appreciation for it, if that makes any sense. It does.

When you say something was missing from the genre for you, was it a nastiness? Because there's a really fun kind of there's some hardcore kills in this movie. And there's obviously a lot of the craft, too. I want to hear you talk about what you were able to do

in 2021 that you weren't able to do in 2011. But what was missing for you? Well, I don't know if nastiness is the right term. I mean, at the risk of getting into semantics, like in my mind, there's plenty of nasty movies that, but that they kind of swing in a nihilistic way. And I didn't want X to be that. And I don't think that it is like, I think X is a fun movie, despite it being like quite violent at times. So I don't know that that's the right term, but there was a sense of like i think the best way to put it is it felt corporate you know like when i grew up horror movies were like either

like weird exploitation movies the occasional great filmmaker who made a great one be it the shining the exorcist rosemary's baby prior to my time growing up and then like the video store which was also just like rows and rows of like near dwell content kind of stuff and then like the video store which was also just like rows and rows of like near dwell content kind of stuff and then in the mid-2000s it started being like so massively successful that everything now is part of these like corporate studio things with and it it changed because it's just obviously like as commercial as anything else and i don't know there's anything wrong with that but it did kind of like drown out what, what I came to know originally from it.

Um, and I felt like that was missing. Maybe it was like the edge. Maybe it was the sort of like independent spirit. Maybe it was the cinema. Maybe it was the gore. I don't know, but there was something that just felt safe.

And that to me just felt like antithetical to what horror movies were. I was thinking about it a bit. Cause I was thinking about those previous films. We actually, you and I actually talked like 10 years ago, maybe more for the innkeepers. And I was just telling my producer one of the first conversations I ever had with a filmmaker. And at the time, it seemed like you were cycling through tropes of the genre that you thought were interesting that you could kind of redefine.

It seemed like, you know, the 80s babysitter movie and the ghost story. And then you did a kind of a cult freak out movie. Did you use that same mentality ahead of X where you like, I want to do a Texas chainsaw style thing? Or was it purely like, I just have an idea for a movie. I want to smash up the horror and porn point of view. Like where does it originate? It's more the latter.

I mean, the reference elements are not lost on me. And it's if you're going to set a movie in texas that's looming over if you're going to make a horror movie in a hotel things are looming over you part of that is by the nature of me not being born a lot earlier there's a lot of things that have been sort of archetypically set that are hard to avoid my feeling about that is i i guess i could either brilliantly come up with something that no one has ever come up with before or I could just not worry about it and sort of let everyone know, like, I know, but it's going to be something different. So in the case of X, for instance, like by it being a slasher movie in Texas in the seventies, I can't get away from the Texas chainsaw aspect of it, but I'm not really trying to, it's just sort of like okay think it's texas chainsaw for as long

as you need be until you realize it's not because you're going to anyway so then i just kind of it's a little bit fun to play with that where it's like i can zig instead of zag here and there but it isn't necessarily part of the idea of like oh i'm going to subvert texas chainsaw interesting okay so you mentioned that there uh there's been a pandemic um i feel like i heard about this movie a while ago and then I didn't hear anything about it for at least a year. So when did you actually start? And then was this a difficult production,

a uncomplicated production? What was it like making a movie in this time? Well, it was unique, obviously. So basically right when we decided this would be a good idea to do the whole world paused. So my timing was terrible.

And it was like right at the top of 2020 so it was like peak covid um so we didn't know how to do it it seemed like we weren't gonna be able to figure out how to do it that summer which is when we wanted to do it um it was important to me that it'd be a summer movie um so i was like we'll have to push it a year a24 didn't want to wait a year so i sort of flippantly was like, we'll have to push it a year. A24 didn't want to wait a year. So I sort of flippantly was like, well, then we got to go to the other hemisphere. And they said, okay. So then we started to look into like Australia and New Zealand. New Zealand at the time had completely kept COVID out of the country. So it was as safe as a place as any to make a movie. This was not the kind of movie that you could like social distance and make so i had just done a tv show that was within all of the protocols and they're fine but they're

not necessarily for a movie like this it it would kind of harsh the mellow as far as like it's such an ensemble movie where everybody not only is close to one another they have to riff off one another and to do that with all of the weight of covid just felt like it would affect the movie in a way negatively that i didn't want to do so we all of the weight of COVID just felt like it would affect the movie in a way negatively that I didn't want to do. So we looked into New Zealand. Obviously, Weta Workshop is world-class best makeup place in the world. This movie was going to be heavy with prosthetics. They were there. They were down to do it. And I was like, well, we're never going to find a place in New Zealand that's going to look like what we need. And then we did.

And so then we went to New Zealand. We were able to bring everybody in through quarantine and then once we got into new zealand there was no covid so we were able to make the movie completely normal so on the one hand no the production was like the most normal production ever but like it was all this stuff to get it there to happen. But it worked out great and it was safe for everybody. And then we had a really great experience on this little island in the southern hemisphere making this movie. This is, I guess, kind of a, I don't know, I guess maybe a dull question, but is it hard to convince New Zealand to let you come make a movie? Were they excited to have a production come and shoot despite what was going on in the rest of the world? Oh, they were very happy, you know, because they were, one one they always want movies to shoot there it's a great place um they have a good business they have amazing crews avatar had been shooting there and avatar was on

hiatus so we got their crew which was oh wow like you know it couldn't have been better we had an amazing crew um there's a great incentive there tax-wise um and yeah they want the industry as much as anyone else and And for them, being locked off in the world at the time, anything that can give people work within the country is great. I mean, it really worked. It's a miracle that it did, but it did. I want to ask you about your approach to telling stories at this point. When we talked 10 years ago, I think there was a lot of self-conscious conversation about the slow burn approach that you were taking to the movies and

kind of really making people wait to reveal something. And I felt like you were employing that in this movie, but maybe not in a self-conscious way. I don't know if you had thought about that. And I was curious if that intersects with, you know, making television for a period of time where like kind of the narrative beats are much different and you have to think about what you're giving the audience in a much different way. Was there any, did you think much about that as you were putting the story together and making this movie? I don't think so. I mean, it's, I get it, what you're saying. You know, for me coming up with an idea or writing something it's i kind of just go and where go i don't not like sort of like meta thinking about it that much um and you

know as far as the slow burn of it all like to me i have the idea for the movie and then there just seems to start to become only one way that i would know how to tell this story that would be effective apparently my taste is a slow burn thing you, I've learned this over the years by everybody telling me. Um, but I'm not like, Oh, we're trying to do a slow burn. I'm just like, well, you have to hold off this information or else it won't be interesting. And if you say it now, then what? And so, and to me, I think suspense is a big part of it and making you like audiences now are pretty hip. They were hip then as far as the tropes and things. So if they start to think they know what the movie is and they're correct, then they're ahead of the movie and they sort of lose interest

and you certainly lose them from a suspense, scary standpoint. So I've always just thought like, well, I have to lead you down a road where you think it knows is going and then subvert that to where you don't know where it's going. And if I can do that once or twice in the first half of the movie, then the second half of the movie is pretty much like I got everybody. Cause whatever they thought was going to happen, it wasn't going to happen. And in the case of a, like,

when is the shoe going to drop kind of story, like a horror movie, it's the only way I know how to do it. But I think also what you mean is like just doing 17 episodes of tv also you know affect that and yes it probably does this is also an ensemble movie it's not one person or two people stuck in a place so there's a little bit more going on um i guess plot and character wise um so i think it's a combination of all of it it struck me that there were more potential victims as well and so like i feel like you get to it a little bit more quickly.

I was wondering like, again, like that's just something that you don't, you're not overthinking anything like that. You're just telling the story that you want to tell. Yeah. And I would, I'm sure there's plenty of people in knowing when the first murder happens in

this movie, that would say, what do you mean? Got to it quickly. By your standards. Yes. Yes. Perhaps by my standards,

it's a little bit faster, but I also feel like, especially with this movie, you really need to, like, endear yourselves to, like, the story and the characters because in order for you not to just see them as, like, bodies, I mean, you go to this movie, you know, like, not everyone's going to make it.

But I don't want you to go and know exactly who and how and when because otherwise, why see the movie? So I want you to watch the first half of the movie or whatever it may be and, like, be charmed by it enough that you're like yeah but so-and-so can't die i like so-and-so you know and and i think that that's becomes just interesting if they're just people getting killed then we could just make a short film save a lot of time because it it seems at least somewhat inspired by what happened to the porn industry and uh the way that some people kind of went out in this maverick way to start making things for themselves to sell direct

to consumer was it were there real life analogs that you were basing the characters on or were they all invention no they were invention just like what it was based on is just that sort of the fact that like you could make a porn movie outside of the movie industry and go direct to consumers. And that was increasing with the incoming VHS boom. And it was like, oh, you don't have to be related to anyone in the movie business. You don't have to have money that the movie was that you don't have to have the time. Like you can just do it. But if you are going to just do it, you can't fail at doing it. So that's what was interesting to me about like you get a bunch of people together and they still have to try. And maybe the ceiling of the movie that RJ is making is only so high, but he's still aiming for that ceiling nonetheless.

You know, it's not like it's not like they want it to be bad. Can you give me an example of something that came easier to you now as a filmmaker that you wouldn't have been able to do if you hadn't had that five year period of working in television? I'm trying to think of, I'm just more like, there's no piece of equipment I haven't used. There's very few kinds of personalities I haven't run into. So I think just managerially speaking, that's a little bit like just by the nature of doing it so many times, I'm just better at it,

I guess. The reason why the question doesn't totally apply is because anything that would have been made easier is not in this movie. So like i was making a movie that's say like the house of the devil like i could probably breeze through that much quicker now um and i would look at that differently and things like that but everything in this movie was pretty complicated there wasn't a day that wasn't like oh this is ambitious for what we're doing and so that's kind of the nature of i think movies and not trying to repeat yourself or rest on your laurels anyway is to be like okay i'm much better at this but now i'm going to try something much harder after you or while you were shooting and

afterwards did it change your perspective on how you want to spend the next five years do you want to make more horror movies do you want to make more movies in general what are you thinking about how to go forward well i've already made another movie oh shit what is it um so i made two movies back to back in okay what is the second film the second film is called pearl and it is a prequel that takes place 60 years earlier about young pearl wow yeah so we went to new zealand and i had to do two weeks in a hotel quarantine and so i wrote a prequel and i sort of collaborated with mia a little bit over facetime about like here's what i'm thinking and this and that i'm going to write this thing we're building all of these sets we've got all these people down here what if we just made two movies and And I was like, I don't know if I can convince A24 to do it,

but if I could, what if we did it? And so her and I figured it all out and wrote the movie in those two weeks, more or less. And then A24 said, okay. And so we made two movies back to back. Okay.

That's amazing. I definitely did not know that. Yeah. I mean, nobody knows it. So like, you know, for what it's worth,

you have to release this after the movies. You can release this tomorrow because no it's been the best kept secret um you know it's been the interesting thing because it's it's the best secret we've ever kept because no one knows the movie exists but it becomes now an awkward secret because people go what's the backstory i'm like oh my god i know it's so specific how much i know and i can't talk about it so now that i know that things are starting to roll out after, after South by people will probably know the movie exists. I want to keep it pretty, I want to be coy about how much people know. But yeah,

that was also part of the overall, when I wrote X, that wasn't part of it. But when I went to go make X, I had this idea of a, to use a ridiculous modern term, like a larger universe. Yeah.

Yeah. What the way x is a movie let's say about how like independent auteur filmmaking is affecting the people in the movie pearl is sort of how like this old hollywood douglas sir kind of thing is and then i have an idea for the third one that if we luck out and x does well what that'll be because you can't make a slash movie without a bunch of sequels i man i love this i'm so glad i asked you that that's awesome um okay let's talk about mia for a second then because i feel like she is slowly accumulating a reputation as like a new i don't know if it's like a freak out queen or you know she takes on roles in which she is put in situations of extremity she's really really good in these movies she's got an incredibly expressive face great performer um why why her and i guess also i guess talk about the cast a little bit more too because like jenna ortega

now is becoming a little bit of a scream queen too there's a few people who are really great in this movie yeah well you know the funny thing is when i first started casting the movie when i met with people the first question i would ask them is why the hell do you want to be in this movie? And mostly because, you know, there's an idea that people would have, you know, it's a porn and horror. Like you get the script and you think like whatever idea they had in their head wasn't the same movie I had in my head. And a lot of people thought of it much more like, as you said earlier, like nasty, nihilistic, like a creepy, sleazy movie. And it just, I always wanted it to be fun. So the people who ended up in the movie were mostly people who like got that like right out of the gate. And then, you know, people had a lot of really interesting

answers to that question. And so Mia specifically, I wanted someone, ideally, whoever's going to play Maxine, I wanted to play Pearl. I didn't know if we could pull that off. I didn't know if we could pull it off performance wise. I didn't know if we could pull that off i don't know if we could pull it off performance wise i didn't know if we could pull it off makeup wise but that was the goal um and mia when i talked to her she was so confident that she could do it and i just believed it 100 and i was a fan i think she's a tremendous actor and and like i was already like i like her she's great her she wanted to do it in a very like, I can kill this kind of way. And I was like, I believe you. And that is what I need for someone to do this. Because not only is it something that you have to throw yourself into, it's like six hours of

makeup from two in the morning to when we start and then 10 hours of shooting, you know, I mean, it's like you, you have to really want to do it because it will like break you. And then the next day you're a completely different person. Um, And I just like her dedication was so obvious. And Mia only has like one gear, which is like go, you know? So I just believe she was like, I believed in her confidence in herself. And so, and I don't think she, I think she doesn't necessarily want it to be in another horror movie, but I think she really dug the script. She dug the idea of like these being two different characters, but same person and i think she was like this is a really cool

opportunity and i went on and on about what i like about cinema and things like that and what this movie was going to be and i think we were just totally on the same page so that was a no-brainer jenna auditioned i wasn't very familiar with her and um she just nailed the audition and when we zoomed she had similar great answers of why she wanted to be in the movie and um she just nailed the audition and when we zoomed she had similar great answers of why she wanted to be in the movie and she had just done scream with some friends of mine and they were raving about her and yeah it's become like the year of ortega which is like she's it's so obvious she's just like where she's going i mean she's incredible um and she was excited to play i guess she had played like the bad girl a lot and so she was excited

to play something different and she felt like the script she was very to play, I guess she had played like the bad girl a lot. And so she was excited to play something different. And she felt like the script, she was very surprised where it went. She was like, you know, she didn't expect it to be what it was. And she normally does. So she was just game. Brittany also, I think, had had an opportunity to play something like against type in the past and didn't do it. So she had this real drive to be like i can like i want to do this

and that's kind of what i was looking for because all the characters in the movie like a they had to be able to like get the jokes and be able to be believable as friends and tease each other but then they also had to have their own like ambition as like the people who were going to take on the roles i think because the movie is about all these people trying to make something for their own ambitions and even down to like owen campbell who plays RJ, like he's a filmmaker himself. And that was important to me. So that way it wasn't someone just pretending to hold a camera. It was someone who knows what goes into that.

And Scott is someone I had known for many years. And we'd always talked about making a movie and I just wasn't making movies. And so I wrote this one and he loved it. And he was excited to like, not be kid Cuddy in a movie, like to really himself in a character and he nails it. He was excited to like not be kid cuddy in a movie like to really himself in a character and he nails it he's amazing and so that was great and martin henderson you know he was great because like a lot of people auditioned for wayne as like slick back hair gold chain toothpick creep and he got it that it was like football coach fun and i get how someone could not get it that way but it was like you either get it And I get how someone could not get it that way.

But it was like, you either get it or you don't. And I was looking for people who right from the jump got it and he got it and was funny right from our first conversation. And so, you know, everyone I got is my first choice in the movie. And some I knew before and some I didn't. And they just like, they all blend so perfectly together. He really surprised me because I felt like I hadn't seen him in a long time, Martin. And he's another one with a good horror movie track record but i'd never really seen him do

a part like this and he was really really funny i mean the movie is i think i'm asking you a lot of high-minded questions about the state of horror but like like you said this is a really fun and funny movie um did you have people who would who were interested in the in the film or even even a24 where you had to explain like like, I'm trying to have a blast here. Like, this is the kind of movie. This isn't going to be the innkeepers. It's not going to be kind of a little bit more quiet or a little bit, you know. Yes and no.

I mean, when I would meet with people or they would audition, everyone was great. Nobody was bad. But it was a kind of a very, like, narrow bullseye what we were going for. And if you intrinsically got it great, if you didn't, it was like, is it worth trying to get you there versus someone who just intrinsically was like, I know how to say that joke. I know how to tease so-and-so like Brittany and Martin knew how to tease each other because I knew from talking to Brittany, I was like, she'll know how to do this. And I knew Martin would know how to do this, you know? And I knew like, I could sense by talking to them how they would fit together.

And thankfully that was true. Um, and we had a great time doing it, which I think was important, but yeah, I mean, I wanted it to be a funny movie. Like I wanted you to sort of like, really like everybody and really like be charmed by the clumsiness of the filmmaking process. I think it's funny that when you think of like an adult movie and what that's trying to feel like as a movie, but what making it is so different, you know, like that was always amusing to me to be like, we could show you what the movie looks like. And then we can show you what making the movie looks like.

And they're totally different things because I think that culturally there's a bit of an ignorance towards like what goes into making the movie, you know, plenty of people probably still think movies are shot in order, you know? And then there's also like a, there's less reverence, what goes into making the movie, you know, plenty of people probably still think movies are shot in order, you know? And then there's also like a, there's less reverence, I think culturally for cinema that there used to be. And so to me, it was fun to put like filmmaking upfront in the movie, just to kind of like hopefully get people to like be kind of charmed by it

and be like, Oh, that's how that works. And that's funny that it's a what's on screen. Isn't what it's like making it. Cause people always ask us, it's scary making scary movies. And it's like, oh, that's how that works. And that's funny that what's on screen isn't what it's like making it. Because people always ask, is it scary making scary movies? And it's like, no, not at all. And if you know about making movies, that would never ask a question like that. But an amazing amount of people ask it, and understandably so, because how would you ever know? Because so few people actually make movies. But so to give a little bit of a window into that process, and then maybe to have people leave this movie hopefully laughing and screaming and being scared and grossed out but also being like it was kind of cool the way the two stories overlapped it was kind of cool that the makeup and it was the same

part like what is that all like to think about the craft of filmmaking like if if i have my druthers that's mostly what people will take away from the movie is they'll think about filmmaking in the craft. So 10 years ago when we talked, I remember The Innkeepers, I believe, was being offered on VOD and that there was something unusual about that. It was kind of an outlier at the time. There weren't a lot of movies. Now, it feels like 80% of films are available on streaming or VOD at a starting point. Your movie is coming out in movie theaters. I'm curious what your feelings are about this state

of how movies are distributed at the moment, since you care about this. I'm doing it backwards, apparently. Yeah, I don't know. It's funny, because House of the Devil was the first movie that I had that was on VOD, and it did pretty well. And it was interesting, because House of the Devil, which forever will be the movie that everybody is like, oh, House of the Devil. I think because when it was interesting because house of the devil um which forever will be the movie

that everybody is like house of the devil um i think because when it was on vod beauty wasn't really a thing so when you went to vod you were like well this looks crazy what's this house of the devil movie now a movie like house of the devil which was a very modestly made movie is competing with like the avengers which cannot do you know so like it it's a weird thing where it's like you can't it's very difficult to be the house of the devil in between all of these enormous movies on iTunes and not get buried so weirdly ironically like the theatrical release now is like better for for like a I don't know I don't know if smaller is the right term but like it's for a more esoteric movie in a way um and I wanted people to have a good time don't know. I don't know if smaller is the right term, but like it's for a more esoteric movie in a way.

And I wanted people to have a good time in the theater. And I knew people were at home for two years. I wanted to make something that was like, you come out of this one, you tell your friends, yo, you've got to see that. I don't want to tell you anything about it, but this is crazy. You've got to go see the movie.

And that is part of the cinematic experience of being with a group of people. So I was making a movie that was theatrically like minded and a 24 is gold from the beginning was like, we'd love to have this movie turn out in such a way that it could be a wide release. And I've never had a movie on this many screens before. So I'm very grateful to them. And I'm, uh, you know, obviously crossing my fingers that it works very well for them.

Um, but I, yeah, I just wanted, you know, people haven't been in the movies in a while. If you're going to go back to the movies, um, certainly to see a horror movie. Like, I hope I deliver in a way that, you know, you tell your friends that like, you got to see this thing.

It's, there's a lot, there's, there's some crazy shit going on. Just like Alex did to me on this show. I did to two friends after I saw it. So you're, hopefully your plan is working.

I was like, yo, you, you, you, you got to see this one. Um, Ty,

we end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing they've seen. Seen anything good lately? Oh, man. What have I watched recently? I mean, I've been so in the spinning plates with making two movies at the same time that I have not watched that much. Let me ask you quickly. Is Pearl done?

Yeah. Shit, man. Next week, I'm recording the score it's almost it's done for all intents and purposes it's done but i mean i have to mess around with it for another like two months to just like mix it and finish everything but it's done being edited and all that so we're like halfway through the bfx and everything unbelievable okay so what what have you seen anything even in the last few months it's so like this is so tragic that i'm just sort of at a loss for words and what i've seen um i've been watching like cooking shows you know like i try you know when i make things i try

not to watch too much um because it's sort of competing vibes a little bit um i recently watched from a few years ago the ben stiller show escape from danimura which is great yeah so what did you what did you like about that? Well, Ben Stiller is a really great director. You know, I think that's the funny thing. He must, like his version of Slow Burn must be like, Ben Stiller actually makes great serious movies. I feel like that must be what's going on with him.

Have you watched Severance, the show that he has on now? I've watched a couple episodes of it. Yeah. Which is pretty interesting for sure. That's what made me watch Escape from Dannemora. I don't know. I think he's just got a really great handle on the crash, but I think all the acting is tremendous in that show. I think it's just all in all, it's really

super well made. And maybe criminally underseen in a way. Or everyone's seen it. I'm not sure. But I feel like it's one of the better, what is it? A miniseries or whatever you would actually call it. But I think that's really terrific. That's a great recommendation. A recommendation of a TV show from a guy who's spent five years making TV. I'm glad you're back with movies, honestly. I like you with movies. That's my preferred. Well, I got at least hopefully two more I can deliver. One for

sure. And if we luck out on March 18th, maybe a third. Congrats on X. Ty, thanks for doing this. All right. Thanks for having me, man. Thank you to Ty West. Thank you to our producer, Bobby Wagner, not just for his work on this episode, but for chatting with me. Stay tuned to The Big Picture. Next week, it's all going down. The 94th Academy Awards will have previews, predictions, a very special movie draft

leading up to the big night on March 27th. And then of course, we'll be coming immediately after the show live, me and Joanna Robinson to break it all down, starting with the 1990s Oscar movie draft coming to you next week. We'll see you then.