The Worst Idea Of All Time - My Week With Cats: A Pur-amble

Episode Date: January 26, 2020

This is My Week With Cats, a reunion of Tim Batt and Guy Montgomery on a cinematic journey that pits the pair against daily watchers of CATS (2019) – a film that cost $100m and is on track to be one of the critically and financially unsuccessful films of the decade. With a glint in their eye and open heart the Worst Idea fellas are ready to tango with Andrew Lloyd Webber’s strangest creation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

today you ready okay let's go the hunt for the wildest movie of the summer everybody ends here this is your super friendly and not aggressive reminder to buy tickets immediately borderlands now playing what is that what is it what is a jellicle cat i can't answer that what is a jellicle cat they keep on talking about the Jellicle cat. Jellicle cat. Get the soundtrack, get a text, and you go see the movie, and it's going to tell you everything all y'all need to know.

Cats! Meow! Hello, and welcome along to My Week With Cats, a miniseries where myself, Kyle Montgomery, and my esteemed associate, who I'm sitting in a room with right now, Tim Batt. Hello. We'll shake hands on the podcast. Very important.

Very crucial. Go to the not insignificant amount of trouble to track down a cinema that is screening Cats here in Auckland, New Zealand, and watch it once a day for a week. This is the first episode, what you might call a preamble, as these feline friends have not yet sat down with Tom Hooper's latest directorial effort. This is part of his trilogy. The first one is The King's Speech, and then it went Les Mis, and then this is the end

of the trilogy, Cats. That's right. Historical sort of pics of his thing are rooted in fact. We are very excited. Tim, I'm so excited to see you, to be with you. I feel like for so long we've been doing this from afar. Yeah, it's been the same except, like, with a one-second delay in between everything.

I tell you what, people, Yeah, it's been the same except with a one-second delay in between everything. I tell you what, people, you don't want to take for granted the instantaneous communication and the joy that it brings to actually hear what someone's saying as they're saying it. Just try adding a one-second. You can figure out your own technical way that you do it. Add a one-second delay to a conversation you're having in both directions. It really fucks with you. I watched a documentary on ventriloquism uh not two nights ago and there was this incredible ventriloquist

who could do this trick where he could uh he had independent control of his tongue and his lips and so he could say something with his tongue and make his lips make these shapes of altogether different words or movements and so it's like watching a person in real time where the audio isn't synced up that's crazy it was it was one of the craziest things i've seen it's almost as crazy as the fact that i would be tempted to believe you sought out a documentary on ventriloquism i'd recommend montgomery's comedy taking a turn uh i'd recommend it to anyone i'm just going to get the name of it for you. It was made by Nina Conti,

who's probably the world's best ventriloquist. She's a British comic who is sensational. And it's about her relationship to the man who taught her ventriloquism. What is it called? Her Master's Voice. It's only an hour. Netflix? Not Netflix, no.

It had a file sent to us very good but um highly recommend anyway if only i mean this podcast isn't about french frillicism or movies that aren't cats it's about cats and in this peramble wait that doesn't even work no you have to per like this preamble oh okay gotcha peramble peramble per view preview no i can't i'm gonna P-R-E-A-M-B-L. Oh, okay. Gotcha. P-R-A-M-B-L. P-R-A-M-B-L? P-R-V-U? P-R-E-V-U? No, I can't. I'm going to leave the puns to you. But in this P-R-E-A-M-B-L, we have, I mean, what's your exposure to the Broadway show

and the movie been so far? I hate cats as a musical, and I quite like musicals as a genre. You've seen a production of cats? I've never seen it i hate the songs i mean do i know many of them nah not really what songs do you know everyone knows uh memory it just looks fucking absurd like what are they up to and i've got a feeling based on the i've tried to keep myself a little bit virginal. Yeah. Away from the reviews and the spoilers and whatnot. But it seems like friends of the pod,

Joseph Moore and Laura Daniel, I think would be emblematic of the wider audience. And they came out and they were like, I'm no wiser as to what that movie is about. And I've seen it just now. Just come out. Couldn't tell you what the plot was. Oh, that's really exciting.

I too don't have a huge i know about it vaguely i kind of find it interesting i think i i don't know if i was uh either watched a school production it was maybe an extra in a school production when i was very young but i have memories of uh sort of young pre-adolescent boys in leotards with tails jumping all over the place and also maybe uh a young girl named elsie belting out a pretty incredible rendition of moonlight so maybe i think i might have watched one performance of it as a boy but not within total living memory and uh it's i don't know what the relationship to an audience in cats was before i think it's sort of cultish because it is

odd i mean so what was the thinking behind creating the musical in the first place cocaine I don't know what the relationship to an audience in Cats was before. I think it's sort of cultish because it is odd. It's so odd. What was the thinking behind creating the musical in the first place? Cocaine, I believe. It's the longest running Broadway musical ever. I think it's still up. And I think Cats might have won more Tonys than any other as well. I think it's like number one in terms of wins.

So it's a real oddity. And I think it's like the thing about Cats is, and this is why it's so funny they made a movie of it and put it out at the end of 2019 is that it's very much it seems to me a bit of art that's a musical because musicals are weird it's a weird art form it's just like yeah man we're going to tell this crazy love story about cats and their struggles and how they go to the afterlife of one was like, okay, man, sounds cool. Sounds pretty esoteric. But that's what the musical theatre stage is for, doing some crazy ideas, people represented by cats,

the struggle is real. Cool, man. It makes sense on the stage. It makes sense live on the stage because it's the magic of theatre. But as soon as you, like like film is such a literal art form it leaves nothing to the imagination everything has to be painted for you you know so you would say there's nothing for you to project onto it so what they've done is they've like fuck man i'm just so excited because the trailer promised that this movie was going to be shit

all the reviews came out and they were like i guess what the trailer was bang on this thing is a hot fucking yeah your i think your description of film as a literal medium is good because i that got me excited to look at it and sort of analyze the point at which i think tom hooper realized he might be in over his head when we're just like you know because it's really fun to come up with ideas and the the hard part is then actualizing them or thinking them through logically to be like well if this is true then this is also true and what qualifies what and from the memories of the trailer like the cats are live they are anthropomorphized as humans largely but they are also living on a scale that is they are still cats in a human world but also what i've heard is the scale makes

no sense because they're not cat sized they're not human sized yeah yeah they're little but it's like i think they're even too little to be cats this is like stewart they're like my sized cat that's so so good and the the even better to me is that we are jumping on this. I mean, we've missed the zeitgeist entirely. But the zeitgeist, the window was so... I know. Tiniest window I've ever seen. But for how much hoopla and excitement there was,

that was, in terms of jokes and something to make fun of, that was a moment in time. And we've both been trying to figure out uh where to to watch this and you know trying to schedule it and we've cleared a week where we can watch it daily yeah under the assumption that we'll be playing in multiple cinemas at multiple times because it came out in the 26th of december and we're recording this on the 16th of january it has been reduced to it's got one screen time it's consistently playing right now at rialto new market at 3 35 p.m it is nowhere else to be seen

we have not told rialto we're going out there they might pull it no no no they can't they might no they can't and i mean you know you know, I feel like there might be value in asking for some sort of contra deal. I'm aware that we're probably going to be paying tickets to see Cats. It pains me. Seven times. But we say, hey, so you know, we're going to be back here

tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that. Is there any way if we tell everyone about how great your cinema is we can please watch cats well there you go if that's not an endorsement we've already baked into the we've sold the cow before we've even haggled on the price of milk we've done this before and if i remember correctly we won that negotiation to the tune of two free pizzas and a 5050 gift card to blaze pizza a restaurant which we encourage you to continue to boycott yes absolutely tim and guy giveth and tim and guy taketh away um back to cats though here's the thing that trips me out it is difficult in the

year 2019 when this came out to get a movie because i think the budget was 100 million 100 million us dollars uh to get that kind of level of funding without so much studio involvement that it becomes almost completely insulated from failure like you have to make the money back they've got ways of doing it i don't know they just keep pumping marketing money into it until it starts floating up and hits zero again but amazingly this movie despite its superstar cast has managed to lose a tremendous amount of money really yeah dude and i don't it's it's it sounds like schadenfreude but it's just entertaining to me because i think the film industry now at that level is so risk averse. And they really fucking hit a clunker this time.

Who can you remember is in the film? I know that Jason Derulo's in it. I know that Dame Judi Dench is in it. I know that Jen... No, not Jennifer Lawrence. Who am I thinking of? Maybe Jennifer Lawrence. No, no, no, no, no.

It's a pop star. Taylor Swift? Taylor Swift, who I'm thinking of maybe jennifer lawrence no no no no it's a pop star taylor swift taylor swift who i'm thinking of the jennifer lawrence of pop music um doesn't jennifer lawrence release pop music no i think she sings she sings jennifer lawrence does she oh no who am i thinking of? Who was in Sex and the City? Jennifer Hudson. Yeah. Jennifer Lawrence is the little white woman who's in Silver Linings Playbook. Jennifer Hudson won American Idol and went on to star in Sex and the City.

You got it. The movie. Yes. Now, who else? Rebel Wilson. Yeah, that's right. Oh, boy. And that's all like oh and james corden who oh yeah fuck really excited to see yeah man i mean i don't begrudge anyone else but james

corden i hope this is an anvil around his career head because fuck that guy nothing will take that guy down i don't know man the truth has to come out at some point what's the truth the truth is he's a dick and you can't just be a flaming dickhead your whole life and get away with it well okay it's getting harder but i still feel like people are executing it constantly few examples come to mind people seem to be seem to be doing it pulling it off um so what are you most looking forward to in this film guy no i i don't know the whole thing it does appear to be such a gigantic flaming mess that there's nothing specifically like i i want to experience the confusion that i've heard people describe i want to uh be reminded of some of the songs ideally enjoy some of the songs i want to be reminded of some of the songs, ideally enjoy some of the songs.

I want to sort of marvel at the decisions that they've made with regards to scale and set and the way that the cats have been animated because when the Lion King remake came out, I went to that at the cinema and was bitterly disappointed. It was really, it was sort of soulless. It was like they had sort of taken planet Earth footage and removed David Attenborough's narration

and just supplanted the story from The Lion King over it. And it was a really unsatisfying experience. And I remember talking, maybe even to the aforementioned Joseph Moore and Laura Daniel about it, and them saying, you know, as soon as you bring it into the realm of the real world, it gets daniel about it and them saying you know they as soon as you bring it into the realm of the real world it gets challenging because it's hard for you know real

animals to emote the way that we did with the animated lion king and i was saying uh but prior to seeing that movie i remember i think joseph was saying it seems weird that they've gone all out real animals like why don't they anthropomorphize the animals so that the lions can be somewhat human yeah and then in a sense cats granted his wish to see what that would be like and it seems like that didn't work either way worse and so i'm really excited to experience that i just i love because it is it is in the same arc the lion king the lion king remake and cats asking it was sort of, I don't know if it's a question, but it's that whole thing of like,

just because you can doesn't mean you should. With regard to CGI. The Lion King made a truckload of money. Did it? It was a huge, I mean, it was. But it was unsettling, right? Did you find it unsettling? I never saw it.

No, I can see why people, yeah, I heard people describe it as sort of uncanny valley like but it wasn't unsettling it was just it was just boring was the big problem it was really really boring see that's a fucking something about that i don't quite know how to get at this but it's like all that digital artistry and that technical know-how and that computing power goes into creating something that just looks like you filmed something kind of okay yeah you know it's that's the whole thing about just because you can create things digitally in the computer screen like is it artful to create a photo realistic lion king do people want to see

james corden is a big tap dancing half man half cat and an android weber coke dream i don't think no man people specifically want to see that but i'm curious to see it it's not something i would think of myself yeah or seek out but we are seeking it out now that it's out there i'm like by virtue of this project we're seeking it out not once not twice not thrice but one week's worth of cats. Yeah. That's, um, it's not cheap to go to the cinema. No. What's, I'd say it'd be $15 at least for an adult ticket. Yeah. So it's at least $70.

Seven times five, $35. $105. There you go. It's $105 worth of cats. With almost definitely diminishing returns. We're not, we're obviously, we're going to be covering our guests as well you throw some popcorn and whatnot in there yeah oh yeah i'm not in a great position to be pouring all of my money into cats but it's what we're doing it's what we're doing and i am excited same i'm looking forward to it brother yeah it's good to um experience a movie with you

physically and that sounds euphemistic but it isn't in a cinema yeah true i think this is a it's unprecedented a new experience we've been to the movies before but as a leisure activity and not to say we won't be taking it easy with Well, this one, I think, is for the boys and the rest of it's work. This first one, this is a treat. Kick your heels up. Okay. Well, the next time you hear from us, we will no longer be sitting here wildly speculating.

It will no longer be a preamble. It'll be a, it'll be, we will have seen it i could see the cogs today you ready okay let's go the hunt for the wildest movie of the summer ends here this is your super friendly and not aggressive reminder to buy tickets immediately borderlands now playing