The Ringer-Verse - Talking to 'Thunderbolts*' Director Jake Schreier | The Midnight Boys

Episode Date: May 5, 2025

The Boys are giving you a special interview with 'Thunderbolts*' director Jake Schreier! (0:00) Intro (0:40) Interview (33:24) Outro Hosts: Van Lathan, Charles Holmes, Jomi Adeniran, and Steve Ahlman Guest: Jake Schreier Producers: Aleya Zenieris, Jonathan Kermah, Chris Thomas, and Steve Ahlman Additional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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life's challenges and opportunities. Up through August 2026, they're running 100 free sessions for school and community-based organizations near you. Learn more at clinickids.com slash 100KK. That's Clinic Kids is registered 501c3 nonprofit. Thunderbolts is in theaters now. We have seen it. We loved it. Thank you. We enjoyed the movie, Jake. Jake's the director of Thunderbolts, as well as beef. Yes. Some other things. Some things.

I want you back. Hymn video. Hey. Hey. Big fans. Fantastic. We sang that a couple of weeks ago here on the podcast. What's your favorite white girl anthem?

Oh, man. I'm going to be bad at all of these fun, quippy answers. This podcast isn't going to go very poorly. I can tell. Sorry. I was just bad content all around. Thunderbolt's fantastic. We really love the movie.

Oh, thank you. like genuinely love the movie. It's very important right now. I don't know if you know in the history of the MCU to get a good movie that everybody liked. Did you have any concept of the general feeling around the MCU while you were making the film or around the release of the film?

Was there any pressure to deliver? I think, I mean, you're aware of what's going on, for sure. At the same time, like you're off in Atlanta and you're kind of on your own, little pod of a thing and we would always just say you know make one good movie you know and like either way like there's always so much like on whatever level you work on there's always pressure you know and like I think part of you know I hadn't done one of these things before like part of the experience was it's funny because um grace you and our production designer and beef came over and worked on this and

when she would run in the like oh we don't have the resource to do this and I want to do this, but we're getting cut here. And I'm like, Grace, if this isn't enough resources, like, there are no more. Right. You know, like, out there, like, whatever level you're working on, like, you're going to expand to that box and whatever level you're working on, there's going to be pressure. And it's hard to make a good thing no matter what you're doing, no matter what scale you're operating on. So I think we, we tried to just kind of keep our heads down and be like, just focus on this movie and how to make it good and tune the rest out. When they come to you or when you go to them or however it works,

do you have to deliver or articulate to them a distinct vision for the film and a distinct take? And if so, what was your take that you feel like made you the guy that they decided to give the helm to? I think it's good to have a take on what you're doing. I don't know that you have to articulate that full take going into the process because part of the way Marvel works and what Kevin's so good at is that form. of collaboration and this idea that like I think he calls it like always be plussing you know like the it's never done

like the one thing you can't do in a Marvel meeting has ever show up and be like I think we're good I think this is it you know what I mean like Kevin's always going to look at what you've got whether it's a script or concept art or an edit and say some good stuff in here some things we could improve like let's get in it doesn't matter like whether it's the best or the worst and so

if you meet that also with coming in every meeting being like I also think we can make this better like I think good, but I think we can improve it. Then I think that probably works the best. You know, so there was a take, you know, they had, they had Century in the movie by the time I got hired. It wasn't in the first, I pitched over like seven months to do it like while we were working. Do you remember who was in the Century role before? It was, as far as I remember, I'm sorry, there have been so many drafts of the characters that might have been in contention.

But it wasn't, it wasn't, it was the team basically. If I recall correctly, I think that it came more, it might have been like a version of Walker becoming more of like a stronger antagonist. And so it was all like internal, you know, and yes, I did at one point say very early on that man thing should be on the team. And that didn't happen. It shouldn't have happened. But yeah, once Century was involved, you know, and especially given I was working on beef, you know, and beef is all about the void. and they're like, we have a character called The Void, and it was like, oh, okay, there's a fit there. And, you know, I think when people say, like, how are they going to beat that guy?

First off, you should say that. You should wonder, like, how on earth you're going to beat an antagonist in the movie, but also, we know, like, there's street-level heroes. And so it was always going to have to get resolved on some sort of internal level and probably, like, the boring version of that is a conversation, you know, where you just talk the bad guy down. And then hopefully, you know, we ended up in a place of finding a way to kind of externalize internal ideas in a way that still feels like an action movie. Was it always baked into the story?

Like, the big thing was like the asterisk. Like everybody's like, what's the asterisk? What's the asterisk? Was it always baked in that by the end, these characters are going to become into Avengers? Or was that something you kind of found? That was in the first draft that I read. So much of the rest, so much of the rest of the movie was different. but that's where it ended.

I think it, yeah, like maybe then it went into a multiversal portal or, you know, the early draft. But that idea, that was the one thing we had to do. We had to deliver them to that point. And then it just became a lot of conversations about what will feel like an earned way to do that, especially in a movie that Kevin's telling us, like, make it different, try to do something different with this one. And so we tried to really weave in a lot of these kind of, you know, references to the

and there's like a little bit of a meta level where you know Geraldine saying you know it's in high school when the Avengers came and like Geraldine was in high school when the Avengers came you know like we're all feeling a bit of that like it's been a while since this has happened and you know there's a murkier kind of feeling in the world and that we could sort of work with that like some of that meta or not sure where you take these characters next and but the asterisk that wasn't part of it like that was I mean I think in my last pitch meeting I was like oh we should do like one Instagram post where we put an asterisk next to the name and then say until we come up with something better to kind of tease. And they really, I remember showing up that, like in the middle of your shoot at some point on the weekend, they do like a photo shoot to like build all the material for the posters, like a photo day. And I saw all the concepts on the wall. It's like, oh, you guys are really running with this astrosis thing, huh? Was it always this team, though? Were there any other incarnations? Are there some other characters that you're like,

they're going to be the new Avengers, maybe let's try these characters or any characters you wanted in it that you maybe fought for? No, no, the only, the team did not shift very much. I mean, the only thing, the discussions just came,

I think, like, the biggest thing that I pitched was in the script that I read that Eric Pearson had written and had this really smart flip on like, everyone assumes it's the suicide squad. Instead, like, they're all being sent to kill each other. Bob or Robert Reckon. Reynolds in that version, like, developed on a parallel path.

Like, he was sort of in this other side of the movie. Right. And I just felt like if it was going to end in some form of internal conflict, like, if you can't beat him with punches, then it's going to depend on a sense of connection between them and Bob and especially Elena, because she's your protagonist. And so, like, we've got to put in, like, in the box with them, like, Bob and the Ball, you know, like, and have them really get to know each other. and whatever limited narrative real estate you have

so that you could earn that ending, you know. Why is Taskmaster in the movie? People are wondering. Taskmaster, so us nerdsloots, we were able to kind of decipher early on that Taskmaster was not going to be in this movie for very long. Yeah. Okay.

I don't think that I was aware, I mean, this is maybe naive of me. I didn't realize that there was going to be, you know, 10 months of marketing to me. decipher and how much it is silly. You know what I mean? I think you always think like, oh, it'll be a great surprise. And you're like, there are no surprises in this world.

That's an interesting kind of Marvel development thing where, yeah, I mean, maybe we felt like, you know, Taskmaster was in the movie. And then we, you know, we were two weeks away from shooting and we got shut down by the strike. Yeah. The set sat there for a year, basically. And when we came out of the strike, got back in the room with. Sonny from Beef, and then eventually Joanna Callow, who also wrote on Beef and co-created the bear, and just felt like the movie was just a little bit bloodless.

You know, that for like, sure, we're not our rated, but you want this to be about anti-heroism and part of, like, my initial pitch was like, it should have tension to it. You should wonder, you know, like, who's going to make it out? Like, none of them should trust each other. And it felt like by just keeping everyone alive the whole time, you weren't really leaning, especially in a movie that's going to have humor, that's going to have banter, it didn't feel like it had a lot of stakes to the tension. And so maybe that's not fair,

but you're in this position where you've had this character, and then it becomes this new idea of, oh, could we do something with that? And it's not fair to Olga, who's a great actress. But I think that if you just bring in a new character, and then they're around, and then that person's not in the movie. Right. You get no person.

You get no purchase out of that. And because there is a relationship at a distance developed between Yelena and Antonia, you can have that death resonate a little bit later in the movie where, you know, she says she had a tough life. She killed a lot of people and then she got killed, same as us someday. Right. And so that hopefully we're not doing it just for fun. I don't find it fun to just kill off a character. Like it's not to, it's just to, if that's what they do, they go around.

and they kill people and you don't dramatize that, you know, in a way that feels like it has any weight, then does the movie feel too light? And so, and then it was a discussion of, well, where do you do that? And it felt like if we did it any later, it was going to hang too much over the movie and step on our ability to tie those characters together and especially them with Bob. I have a question. So you, coming back from the strike, and as you said, the set lying dormant for the better part of a year, when you come back to a project like that, do you feel like that productivity and that creativity has just been sitting on ice and then you see this like defrosted thing in front of you and you're like well we got to pick this right back up where we left off or are we going to be like making some iterative changes in the time that we were away like were there things that were happening behind the scenes that we needed to change yeah i think it you know it's not fun to be about to shoot a movie and then have it got shut down and it is a lot to like but i think to marvel's credit they used that as an opportunity you know we could have just picked back up you know gone back into weeks, you know, been a bit of a whirlwind and like just made the movie we were going to make.

But I think the ability to get that close, and especially in a Marvel context, like we had storyboarded almost every sequence, we had pre-vis. There's a lot of the movie you can actually see to be able to get that far and then step back from what that was and take a beat to be like, is that really the best version of what we could make? Or is there something if we take a few more months of development before we get back to Atlanta, could we push this? Could we make this better? and I do think, I remember saying, like, we all went to the, there's such a weird feeling, you know, you're like, in the midst of it, and then all of a sudden it's like pencils down.

Then we went, I think, four of us went to the Waffle House. There's a Waffle House off every single exit on the way to the States. What was your experience with the Waffle House? But have you spent a lot of time at the Waffle House a couple of years? I'm a Waffle House fan. I love the design, the minimalist design. What's my order? Just the, I'm going to get the name wrong, but just the, I want to

pancakes, you know. Okay. The pancakes, the waffles, you get the, you get the hash rounds loader or what do you do? I'm failing at this whole Waffle House thing. They're not doing a good, I also meant to say waffles and just said pancakes. So the premiere was last night. I want the waffles. Yeah, I want the pancakes at the Waffle House.

I want, no, I just want it straight up or the blueberry kind and then syrup on it and then eggs on the side. And like, maybe the sausage. Right. That's fair. Like, fair. The movie deals with some, like, really heavy themes, you know, uh, It starts with Yelena jumping off a building, right? You know, you have depression and what the void represents.

How important was it to keep that, like, serious tone of mental health issues, the central focus of the film? I think, I mean, that stuff, we went deeper and deeper with that, and it was when Sunny came in from beef, and we wanted to sort of have our own version of a bond opening to the movie. And I think one of Sunny's big ideas with Beef was, and he was really, I wasn't sure it was going to work out, but he was really committed to this idea that depression, emptiness, like the sense of the void, that, like, those are not niche issues anymore. You know, that those are things that you can explore and it can still connect on like a, on a mass level.

And I was like, well, we'll see. I mean, I knew I loved, like, what Beef was as a story and the art of it. And then to watch that connect, like, it's very nice when you have a friend who, like, really cares about something and believes. in it and he puts it out there and it connects in the way they were expecting it to. And so it felt like, let's see. Like, let's see like what scale that can really get to.

And, you know, obviously it's important if you're doing that to make something that feels honest. You know, I've certainly gone through my own, you know, connection to that stuff. But to people who feel that, it just felt like here's a path we could take that's different. You know, I mean, everyone sees, you know, this project come out and they're like, oh, it's suicide squad. or they've done Guardians of the Galaxy, like where is a place that we can go that feels like we are bringing something new to this world and to what a team-up is?

And so that was like, oh, we want a Bond opening or like a Mission Impossible opening, but one that feels honest to our movie. Like, we're probably not going to beat Tom Cruise, who's going to space, he's doing, you know. Can we do it? Like, if you have Florence Pew, you know, can we do a moment that starts on her face

and a real character moment that, like, is essentially kind of pointing you towards suicide, which you don't see in a lot of summer marble blockbusters. And then, yeah, then there's a twist on it that it's more about like being disaffected. And, you know, that stuff is there under the surface and she's not ready to admit it to herself yet.

But if you can do that all in one shot and then she steps off the second tallest building in the world. And that's like an emotional stunt more than just an action one. And that felt like a place that... It was always like, where can... can we win? You know, like, what ground can we win on? Like, what is the thing that we can with these actors and with the people that we have here

that we feel like we can do what other people aren't doing? There was a specific trailer that you guys put out, and it was the film broke, it was everywhere, rejoiced. It was like. Rejoiced and then also made fun of us, but which is fair. But it's the internet. I watched that, and I saw that and I was like, you know, shout out to Sean Finacy, the big picture of all of our people over here. I watched it and I was like, okay,

they're actually trying to say that there's craft involved in this film, which I think one of the narratives around superhero movies have been that there's no craft only commerce. And when you watch the movie, you get a real sense of character, a real sense of style, a real sense of craft. How important was it for you guys?

Because when I watch Beef, beef is essentially about this mutated connection between two people. But it is definitely a connection. There are definitely two people who are intertwined. And this movie was kind of the same. And there was real craft in creating those relationships outside of superhero affair. Did you want to make a non-super hero movie with superhero characters?

Were you guys thinking that you were making the A-24 version of a Marvel movie? Was that a part of the thinking going into it? I think that, just to be clear, that trailer was a joke. I made it I mean Marvel took a seat My assistant and I made that as a joke Just the titles Because I just thought it was funny

That there were all these 824 people like on set And I thought it'd be cute to do And then Kevin loved it Like I think it's funny Like the response to these things Wait you guys made it as a joke Not intending for it to be an actual trailer To the movie

I thought it'd be cool to maybe put it on You know on Instagram or something But you keep having these Instagram ideas That they're just like This is part of the market It's weird right Like, your hearts is social. I know, yeah, yeah.

I would fail very badly at that being a content creator. But I think that it is funny to watch, like, oh, Marvel thinks they're taking this direction. And it's like, it's just Kevin and Lou and Assad and the marketing department. They did a great job. Like, there's just people who are into ideas. And I showed it to Kevin. He was like, that's awesome. And then he sent it to the marketing department.

And they're like, we can make a real trailer with this. they, so all the imagery and like what it really became, like they did that. I think I had picked the song and, you know, the titles are basically what I made. And it was just, I think that there was this real, you know, the same, like, whatever your challenges are could also be an opportunity. You know, it's like not that many people have heard of the Thunderbolts. Like, we're not the Fantastic Four. That also allows you a certain amount of freedom and it was really cool to see the studio as a whole. And when I say the studio, I think it's hard for people to grasp this.

Anytime I meet someone, I think they just don't assume that I even made the movie. They're like, well, so you were, there are a lot of strings being pulled. It's like, it's just Kevin and Lou. They just come into the room and they have ideas. And because they've earned this trust over that time, Kevin likes a trailer. Like, we'll put it out. You know, and there was this kind of freedom to embrace that. The thing that I liked about it was it's a joke that's true.

You know, like, those are the people who made this movie. You know, like, we're not actually just reaching to pretend that it's an A-20. thing like those there was no attempt really to like make this the a 24 Marvel movie I think and we're not an indie movie we know that I don't want to like claim something that we're not I think though that you know if it doesn't sound too pretentious like a movie is the sum of the people who make it and if you're doing something good then everyone is supposed to bring some part of themselves to it and those are the people that made this movie like gracian who made past lives and hereditary and beef She production design this thing.

And there's so much of her in it. Like Andrew Palermo, who has done, you know, he's done Moon Night and Green Night. You know, he's done both. Harry Yun, who did Beef and Minari, but also cut Shang Chi. You know, like, we left out that part. Like, they'd actually worked in both sides of the world. But I think it's nice, even if it's in kind of joke form or whatever it means, just because you rarely get to talk about in almost any movie context in a trailer,

who makes the movie? you know this crew that really is such a huge part of what these things become and so it was kind of you know it was nice to at least like even if in slight joke context and you were mad that you had to sit through all those credits to get to the post credit scene well no look this is what I say and I think that the art of the post credit scene has been dying and people haven't been taking it serious enough Jake okay you guys gave us a post credit scene that was worth sitting through all of the colorists and all those people that make these movies and we love them.

If I'm gonna sit there for the entire time. I want something to pay it off and you guys did pay it off. It was a great post-credit scene now. Be real with me. All right. Captain Falcon,

you know, our Captain America, he's taking some bruises, you know what I'm saying? He got beat by Ant, man, he's been struggling, you know, and you had him suing. He's suing. Our guys, like, can you want,

Walk us through, like, why we've got to be Captain America? Why couldn't it be Clint Barton? Like, can I say, I love the post-credit sequence. I was there when the post-credit sequence was shot. I did not direct that post-credit scene at the very end of the movie. That is from the set of a movie that has gone into production recently. Oh. But you can't, you can't name it.

I mean, I probably could, but I don't know. You're supposed to leave a little bit of mystery. Is that so obvious everyone knows already, right? This is a spoiler free? Yeah, that's that's on the... So my follow-up would be then you probably, your heart is with these New Avengers.

Mm-hmm. Who are you taking? You've got to put money on them. The New Avengers versus the Avengers. I will bet on my guys and go down with that ship when it... You don't lose money. It's like in sports where you bet on the Niners or the Warriors,

even though you know they're not going to... I mean, it's like, sometimes you just want to bet on your own team and root for them. It's true. Can I ask you, as a movie lover, obviously your director, how do you feel like we're in a cultural moment right now where I feel like people weren't expecting sinners to do what it did? People are going out to the IMAX.

Like, it's a hot ticket. All my friends are like, I can't get in, I can't get in. For you being like, oh, we take it over these IMAX theaters with Thunderbolts. How do you feel? You're kicking sinners out. You're kicking sinners out of IMAX, Jake. Me personally. I went around and I was like, hey, it's our time.

No. No, I texted Ryan. I said, I'm sorry about the screens. He said, no, they knew when they moved their date that you get two weeks. I mean, we're going to get two weeks and then we're going to get moved out. You know, like, that's the way it goes. But I mean, the movie's amazing. I saw it in 70mm, I think.

And yeah, what an incredible second weekend. That just doesn't happen. And it's great to have something that, like, you know, with all the kind of stories and the way things are positioned and how it's kind of sad that we spend so much time paying attention to box office you know that like that's such an instant part of the conversation and i'm gonna get it i mean if you're making movies at the scale you're making expensive art it's not that it doesn't matter but i think to have such a tangible sign that people love this movie you know like that must just be such a nice thing and i know i know i know folks at proximity and i'm just really happy for that and yeah i feel you know i think They said, this is literally, I didn't even read the story. I read a headline that suggested they were going to put it back in theaters at some point later in the year in IMAX. I hope that happens. And I'm sorry.

Going back to what you just said about the economic side of it and just like how we pay attention to things, the Rotten Tomatoes for your movie has officially come out. Are you aware of the story? No, I don't, I didn't refresh that. 15 times. So it currently sits early on in the process. It currently sits at a 95% and run the tomatoes. 95.

As someone who has refreshed that more recently than you, I think we might be down to 92. But I'll take the 95. But here's the deal. If you start there, you know that you're going to end up with a really strong critical consensus. That hasn't been the case with a lot of the superhero fair that has come out, just recently. Maybe the critics have are fatigued of it or maybe these movies aren't meeting a certain

critical standard. Do you care? Did you care? When you made this movie, you're making something that's different than beef. I watched the first episode of beef and I go, yo, what the fuck is going to happen here? Like, whatever.

This, I am along for the journey. I've read so much of this stuff. I've indulged in so much of it. I kind of know where it's going to happen. So it's a completely different feeling. I guess my question is, do you make a movie for the critics? Do you make a movie for the fans? How do you make a Marvel movie and have it be taken seriously? Hmm. I mean, what I want to say, but then I'm trying to think if I'm being honest with myself is that like you're supposed to make it for you. Oh. You know what I mean? Like you're

supposed to, or I was, because I was in a band. I was in a band with it was called Francis on the the lights. And Francis would always struggle with this about this idea of trying to, like, whether you were making it because he didn't like to think about the audience and what they want. But at the same time, like, if you're thinking about the scale of playing the Barry Ballroom versus, like, the Apollo or a bigger room, the

scale and, like, what you're presenting matters. And so we always talk about it, like, I try to imagine an audience of me's. You know, like, there's like a whole audience, you know, all audience of Francis. So, I don't know that that's true to what we did. I think, like, I want to make things that

I would go see. You know what mean that I would think were interesting and that we're cool. But I can't say, but then the other thing is also it's not just about me. You know, like the way that these movies get made and I don't feel like it takes anything away from what I did to say that like it's the efforts of so many and you're developing this with so many people. Like you're in there with Eric and with Brian and Sonny and Joanna and Kevin and Lou. And like part of what was fun about it is that like if you put something interesting in front of Kevin. He is so good at working with it. And he's so good in the edit room.

Like, oh, you actually want to land that beat here. So it's kind of off the beat with the music. So it feels more like a surprise when Antonio gets shot in the head. You know what I mean? And like the next test screening, all of a sudden you got the gasps that we weren't getting in the one before that. I think when you've got the person there who's made all the best

of the most classic versions of these things, and then he's also saying, make it different. And you're bringing him stuff like, I don't, you know, I come from a little bit of a different world. that like he speaks for a certain side of the fandom. You know, like I love a lot of these movies. I speak from my own perspective of what I like in them. I think like if everyone comes with that

and you can still say at the end of the day that like you all like what you're making, you agree that there's something interesting about it, then you just hope, you know, like you hope it's a good movie and you hope people like it and, you know, sure. Do you think the fans have, you think fan service is too important

in some of this IP stuff, we see the tension that exists in Star Wars that exists in Marvel. It seems like sometimes the studios or the people that are green lighting and making these movies, that they are so involved in fan service

that they're not as concerned with giving you guys the right to do the things that you need to do. Hmm. I mean, not in this case. You know, I can only speak for my own experience. I mean, I don't think that the, and I don't want to offend any comic book fans, but I don't think that the world was inherently clamoring for a Thunderbolts movie.

I don't think that that was like, we just got to make it, so figure out what it is. You know, like it has to happen. So that wasn't my experience. I think that, you know, in general, as someone who listens to this podcast network quite a bit, and I appreciate that, you know, I read stuff about movies, and I also know, a lot of people that make movies and the divide between the way movies are talked about. And it should be like people, like when you read the reviews today and you refresh Rotten Tomatoes, like people are critiquing not just the movie itself, but also like the environment that it lands in

and what's going on with the studio. And like, they should. When you make a movie, you're more in it. You're like, here's what we've got. Did we do the best job? We're just trying our hardest to make a good movie. And I think most people are doing that. And so I tend to, you know, when I look at things that work out or don't work.

how I often feel like it's just harder because it's hard to talk about the nuts and bolts of craft or the way story is put together because even we who make it. I'm still learning about how to do that stuff well.

Really, it's that that makes the difference and then we need to find a way to frame that. In the same way, like, music criticism works where, I mean, how many music reviews talk about, you know, there was that like one radio head article like 20 years ago, right, that talked about the core progressions and Tommy were talking about

that trick of like, you know, shifting in different keys but using like a common melody note to bridge them. And it was like, I have not seen this in the music article before because we have to translate it into more kind of cultural ideas or, you know, I think that to me we're often like putting that on things when in fact it's just, it's hard to make a good movie. It's hard to a good show. I know because I've been on some good ones and I've done, yeah, I've messed up sometimes. I've not made the best thing. Like, it's not easy to do this stuff. And I think, so I think about it more that way. It's possible. But again, like, from my own experience, yeah, it wasn't. Before you leave, I want to, then I want to ask this. Yeah. Was there anything like, what was the heart to you of you're just like,

if I can do this in this movie, if we can land this, like, I'm going to fight for this because, like, I'm going to be proud if I see it. Was there anything, whether it was, like, it was, like character interactions, a set piece that you're like, we need to land this. I mean, for me, it was Century, Century, the Void, Bob, and I modeled it after a friend of mine, you know, who has gone, I mean, I've gone through my own versions. I mean, it's not meant, we don't give it a diagnosis, but there's something so interesting about, you know, I had this friend that would dream of like the highest heights and would be like, you know, I'm going to put this out there and it's going to reach into the world, it's going to get to this

person, and you'd be like, we're in a basement in Brooklyn. that's not going to happen. And then it would happen. And you'd be out there. We'd be out there. And then all of a sudden, when we would get closest to some form of success, he would tear it all down. And we'd get to the lowest point. And at some point, when you went through the fourth one of those cycles, you'd realize that this was, they were linked. You know what I mean? That this was just going to keep going on and that the real sort of journey for that person was to learn how to be okay with being themselves and not the golden god. you know and the golden god was exciting you know what i mean we were around for it was fun to be around it had energy it wasn't you know scary but but it didn't it always came with the void and so that you know we we kind of our version of that character was this idea of the duality between

kind of hubris and despair as opposed to like good and evil within within that character and and so that that became the thing that i was like if there's any way and again you don't have to take all of that from the movie, it's got to just work on its own level. But if we can get that in there, and it works on that kind of personal and internal level, then that would feel like like we had done something.

So Century is like getting the best new music. And the void is like, damn, they gave me, they get my album a one. Yeah, tough. Jake, let me tell you something. We love the movie. We are so proud of the film and we are happy that we didn't have to lie to you.

Yeah. Yeah, I was very worried. I was just like, once I saw it, damn, I like, I was like, whoa. By the way, I would love to do, you know, I'm so glad you like the movie. I want people to like the movie.

I would like people to go see the movie. It would be fun. I always see those Q&As, like, every now and then you go to one of those Q&As where someone, like, doesn't like the movie. That would be fun, you know? Like, just to kind of get into it a little bit.

I don't know, Jay. I don't know, Jay. Let me tell you something. We can get you back on with this guy. And we can, we can get you back on. on with this guy right here. Tell you what,

when I make something you don't like, that's when I'll get my end right back. When you were talking about the century as a recovery music critic, I'm like, because I get those posts called me like, how damn you? I'm like, oh, man, my pet. It's stuff.

Oh, thank you for joining us, man. Thank you guys so much. This is so fun. Thank you for joining us. Fantastic film. And I guess we'll see you on the MCU shoulder or corner or sometime again. Thunderbolts too.

Who says no? New Avengers. New Avengers, too, who says no, right? Let's see what happens. All right, guys. That was our interview with Jake. How are we feeling? Feeling great.

Jake was great. That was awesome. My somebody's Waffle House order? Likes pancakes. Who knew? And I think the rest of the directors out there, the town, don't be cowards. Be like Jake. He came here and answered all the questions.

Didn't flinch, no nothing. Like the midnight boys, like, come on. That's a way they get him to come. Um, don't be scared. Don't be scared. Don't be cowards. Don't be mad in the show, Charles.

No, that you got it. What? This one got us in trouble with Anthony Mackey, bro. What? We got us in trouble with Mackey. Thank you, y'all.

We appreciate y'all watching the Midnight boys. We're going to be back this week. We got to end. The whole. The feed is on fire the whole week. Just keep watching the feed dairy out. What's the difference between butter and butter made from real California dairy? It's the real California farm families behind it.

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