WHAT WENT WRONG - The Revenant

Episode Date: October 11, 2022

This week Chris & Lizzie go balls to frozen forest floor as they trudge through The Revenant. Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, crawled by Leonardo DiCaprio, mumbled by Tom Hardy, and challenged by climate change - the only person having fun in this one was the guy in the CGI bear suit.Go Ad-Free - Join Our Patreon!Check Out Our Merch!Follow Us on Instagram!What Movie's Next? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Meet the man with his face in Leo's ass. All right. I mean, should be fair. Hello! And welcome to another episode of your favorite podcast. What Went Wrong about the Making of Movies, both good, bad, and everything in between? I am one of your hosts, Chris Winterbauer, here with Lizzie Bassett. Lizzie, we have a special episode today.

Why don't you tell the audience about it? We have a special episode because we have a very special guest. Here with us today is Lau McKee. He is an editor. He's also one of my best friends' boyfriends. So we love him a whole lot. And we're happy to have him here. Here on Merritt Alone, one of Lizzie's best friends' boyfriends.

Well, Lau is also a very talented editor. So I'm interested to hear what you think of this movie you have chosen for us today. But Lau has done a lot of research and he's ready. and I'm mad that I had to watch this. So I guess, uh, Lao, take it away. I am also mad that I made myself rewatch this. I liked it less this time than I did the first time I've seen it. Okay, so the movie we watched was 2015's The Revenant, directed by Alejandro Gonzalez and Uritu.

Had you guys seen it before? Yes. No. You'd never seen it, Lizzie? No, I had avoided this movie like The Plague until this movie. moment. Oh, yes. I saw it at the arc light in 2015 in theaters, and I haven't seen it since then. Yeah. I mean, it made such a splash when it came out. But it's kind of faded. Like, I don't feel like people don't talk about it as much these days. Yeah. It doesn't, yeah, it doesn't have

quite the staying power. I'm going to, I'll let Lizzie be the nace. I'm not going to be a wholehearted defender of this movie. But here's what I will say. The story I find, I think that's why the movie is a little forgettable. Not a lot happens. I'm not that invested necessarily in what's happening. From a technical perspective, the movie, I think, is still remarkable to look at. Like, the first 15 minutes alone,

the fight scene with, I don't know if it was the Sioux or the Pani on the river. That was amazing. Yeah, I mean, it's an amazing opening. I mean, in its own right, it's up there with saving Private Ryan in terms of staging, you know, compelling fight. fight scene. I personally find that the movie kind of grinds to a

Leonardo de Paprio-style crawl halt after that in some senses, but it's a pretty amazing technical feat to look at. And watching it, I feel the pain of the actors making it. It looks so brutal. I, listen, this is not the worst

movie we've watched on this podcast. It's not a movie I would have sought out for myself. I literally never would have watched this, so I guess thank you for bringing it up. But I have a lot of thoughts. My main one is that do you remember Nick Nolte's character in Tropic Thunder who is like making up this whole story about how he like survived the minds and numb and he blew off his hand when he reached for a helicopter and then the whole thing's fake? That's what this movie feels like is the 17th century version of Nick Nolte and Tropic Thunder.

There's no way this man survived. I completely agree, Lizzie, but I felt the exact same way. So the Revenant is the story of Hugh Glass, an American frontiersman and fur trapper who was mauled by a grizzly bear on a fur trapping expedition in 1823 and what is now South Dakota. His company left him to die. And supposedly, he tracked down the two men who left him out of a desire for revenge. So that's where the story came from. That's sort of the legend. Oh. Yeah.

So this really happened, supposedly. though I believe clearly the film dialed it up quite a few notches. They took it up to 11. Wait, but from what you just read, was his son not a part of the original story? No son. Oh. They added the Native American son for the film. Interesting.

Yeah, they did a lot of pseudo-Native American mysticism, his connection to Native Americans, like throughout the movie. It's a big part. One of the problems I have with the movie, actually, is the fact that it's just a shame that Hollywood continues to churn out movies that are supposedly sort of very progressive. And another movie about indigenous peoples that doesn't center indigenous peoples in the story where the lead character is a white man who speaks for the Native Americans. Yep. And the real story, he doesn't have a Native American son. he doesn't have a Native American wife.

They did that to make the movie feel sort of modern and progressive, sort of like shoehorning it in in a way that I think feels phony a little bit. I almost wish he had just been really pissed at these guys for leaving him. I felt the same way where I didn't love that all of the indigenous people in this movie were, first of all, all killed just immediately or have horrible, horrible things happen to them. And also they're just all seen through his eyes and his perspective and they never get to do much. It was just very like, they felt very disposable in a way that I didn't like. It's unfortunately a little bit white savoury.

They did it with dances with wolves. They did it with Last of the Mohicans. You'd think in 2015 maybe we'd be past it. So that's one of my issues. I do think it's a very long movie. It's a very bleak movie. It's very violent and dark and gray and cloudy. So thank you guys for watching it because I know that it's not necessarily a fun, you know, two hours and 40 minutes.

Yeah, I forgot how long it was. So it's based on this true story. And then I guess sometime in the 90s, a novelist named Michael Punk decided to write a fictionalized account of Hugh Glass's story called The Revenant, a novel of revenge. It was published in 2002. He publishes this book in 2002. It's a very little fanfare. Except before the book was published, the rights were bought as an unpublished manuscript in 2001 by Hollywood producer and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman. Oh, yeah.

Akiva Goldsman. Yeah. Big time producer, writer, sometimes director. You might have seen The Dark Tower adaptation of Stephen King. Oh. That was Akiva Goldsman. Yeah, no one really saw it. Not unusual at all for unpublished manuscripts to be purchased, optioned, have those rights to

before the book is ever published. So if the idea has any sort of cinematic appeal, the agent representing the writer will oftentimes share it in Hollywood to help secure something prior to even it getting published in some instances. And it probably goes both ways. I sort of assume that it's cheaper to get an unpublished manuscript than an already published novel. Yeah, you're just dealing with less competition. Exactly.

You don't have a bidding war situation necessarily. Yeah. You're dealing with that. This is back in 2002 when the book was published, 2001, when the manuscript was the rights were purchased. The movie doesn't come out until 2015. So it sat around for 14 years almost. And I believe this is because everybody knew this was going to be a very difficult movie to finance and logistically film. Yeah.

I mean, one of the stars is a grizzly bear. Yeah. Yeah. How were they going to film that scene in 2001? You know? Like the special effects hadn't necessarily caught up yet. Well, and also, like, the Western had fallen out of favor to give people, like, a little further context, right?

Like, Unforgiven, dances with wolves, last of the Mohegan's. You have this, like, last kind of dying breed of the Western and the revenge movie in the late 80s, early 90s. I guess you have the Quick and the Dead, Sam Ramey. And there are even charts that show it. Like, Westerns went from the most popular genre of film. back in the 50s, 60s, to the least popular. And so it's also kind of a dying breed in terms of how it fits into the landscape in

Hollywood, I feel like, at that time as well. Yeah, I mean, I think it was kind of a dead zone for, I can't think of many Westerns from that era. Not until 310 to Yuma. I was going to say, 310 to Yuma. It was a bigger one. So at this time, the first screenwriter they hired was a playwright named David Rabe, who had written the play.

and the film Hurley Burley. He had written the script for the firm with Tom Cruise. Love that movie. One of the directors attached really early on, I thought was quite surprising. It was Korean director Park Chanwuk. Yeah. Of the Vengeance trilogy, so, so, so, so talented. That could have been kind of awesome. It sounds like he had been looking to do an English language film for some time, and he didn't do one until Stoker, which was a few years later. I can say one thing. His version of the Revenant would have been fun. Like, it would have had a really dark sense of humor to it. Yeah, there would be some humor 100%.

Old boy is so disturbing, but also quite funny. Now I really want to see his version of the movie. That kind of almost, like, pisses me off while that you have shared this. So then the movie sort of goes dark for a few years. And then the actual screenwriter who ended up being the screenwriter for the draft we saw came on. And he came on in 2007. His name is Mark L. Smith. He was hired for this one by the company that ended up producing the film.

I think Akiva Goldsman had probably sold it at this point, but it went to anonymous content. I used to work there. Oh, really? That was my first job in Hollywood. I was the front desk girl at anonymous content. My first celebrity interactions was people coming in and angrily telling me I made their coffee wrong. So anonymous content for anybody that doesn't know, I think started out as more of a commercial production house, but they have since become and were when I was there as well, a massive management and production company.

So they represent tons and tons of actors, writers, directors, big, big people. They also represent a lot of really big name actors. It's a very cool company. They make some really good movies. Oh, very cool. So they bring in Mark L. Smith. They bring him in to do a pitch. He doesn't know how to pitch, so he just writes the script and shows up and hands it to them.

They like it. They hire him. Is that because 90% of the script was just descriptions of the main character crawling? because there's like almost no dialogue. He was like, yeah, he was like, there's 15 pages with no dialogue in this script. But that's, which is probably why they hired a horror writer, to be fair. Yeah, maybe. Yeah.

A lot of just action and following him, you know, walking around. So they bring him in and then I found an interview with him where he talks about all of the different directors and actors who are linked to the roles. He doesn't list everyone. The most interesting one that he says is for Hugh Glass, for a good guy. period of time around 2007, Samuel L. Jackson was linked to the role. Really? I would like to see that. So for anybody that doesn't know, the character Hugh Glass is played by Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie. Those are not two that one would normally think of as interchangeable. I, you know, definitely Samuel L. Jackson has the sense of humor that I feel like was missing from this. A part-chan

Wook, Samuel L. Jackson revenue would have been so fun. And then also, how many times in film history, in Hollywood history, especially, have we seen a true story about people of color whitewashed, played by white people? Or even if it's fictional, they do it with anime and stuff like that all the time. Goes to Michelle, you know, that sort of thing. So how cool would it have been to see it go the other way, you know? I don't believe a single thing this man said about his trip anyway, so might as well have been Samuel L. Jackson. I mean. Okay, so that all fell through Christian Bess. Bail was linked for a minute. Oh, of course. Of course. That makes sense.

He's actually, to me, probably better for it than Leonardo DiCaprio. Yeah, I personally thought Tom Hardy was actually the best in this movie in terms of, like, casting. He very much feels like a piece of shit, like 1820s, like Frontiersman. He does a great job. I'm sure we'll get to this. I can't understand a single thing he said. But yes, I agree that I was more interested in Tom Hardy's comb over and muskrat hat than I was Leonardo de Caprio. So finally, the movie really.

starts kicking into gear in 2011. They hire Alejandro Gonzalez in Uritu to be the director. He is a Mexican filmmaker. He's born in Mexico City in 1963. He started his career as a rock radio host in the 80s. He then transitioned into television producing. He even composed music for some television films back in the day as well. And he did that in the 90s for a while. And then I think at some point he got linked up with Guillermo del Toro and Alfonso Quaron, the three amigos as they're known. They helped him make his first film. Amores Perros, which if you think this movie's depressing.

He does depressing movies. That came out in 2000. His debut film premieres at the Cannes Film Festival. From day one, his movies are Art House Darlings. They are critically acclaimed films. So he does Amaris Peros in 2000. 21 grams in 2003 with Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, Naomi Watts. He does Babel in 2006.

And then he does a smaller film called Beautiful with Javier Bardem in 2010. And then he does Birdman. It becomes huge success. The Revenant is next. In 2011, he gets brought on, and he decides to bring on Leo to play Hugh Glass, and then Sean Penn to play Fitzgerald. Oh. Interesting.

Yeah. Interesting. He also comes on with Mark L. Smith and he rewrites the screenplay with Smith. My big questions about whether or not this film was worth making the way he made it all have to do with Inuritu and his choices. In the positive column, Mark L. Smith loved working with him. He was super collaborative and he said it was very lovely to work with him. This is 2011.

The production doesn't start for three years and it's because Inuritu has Birdman and DiCaprio has Wolf of Wall Street. Okay. So they have all these projects they have to make first. And Mark L. Smith describes it like three planets, the movie Inuritu, and DeCaprio all have to align. They have to find that perfect time for them to align to make the movie. So it takes a long time. I think what really kicks it off is Birdman winning Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Cinematography for Emmanuel Lubeschi, known as Chivo.

Because that's money. And that's who shoots. the Revenant. Yes. So Chivo stealing Deacons' Oscars year after year until Blade Runner 2049. And Chivo at this point is like the hot commodity for shooters in Hollywood. So they finally are able to start principal photography in October 2014. Sean Penn has left the project and been replaced by Tom Hardy. So it's Inuritu, DiCaprio and Hardy are the three big names and Chivo as the cinematographer. they start with a production budget of $60 million. That's a lot of money.

Like, that's a big art house movie to begin with. Yes. And I'm guessing it went higher. So they start shooting in October 2014 in Calgary. And they go up there because they need super cold weather because they want all of their actors to be horribly, horribly miserable. Was it actually a thing where they wanted them to be physically uncomfortable or they just need the snow at that point?

Both. I think that what was super important to Inuritu was authenticity and, like, real immersion. Great. He really, for the viewer, he really wanted them to feel the cold and the best way to do it is to put the actors in it. Yeah, I'm sure it was also, like,

what the movie does so well is it, basically the whole movie shot on a wide-angle lens, and the camera is constantly moving in circles. As if you're just sitting there, turning, looking at, and actually, what's really interesting, it doesn't shoot conventional coverage. They even do a really interesting thing with the sound mix where usually they mix the dialogue down the center channel so it's easier to understand.

One of the reasons it's hard to understand what Tom Hardy's saying is that as the camera pans away from him and he's still talking, they pan the dialogue as well. So it feels more immersive like you're there, but it does make it harder to understand. Yeah, and so I'm sure that. And also Tom Hardy's accent. Well, you know, I'm saying on top of that. Yeah, but I do think that I'm getting. that Inuri too was like, I want to be able to point the camera in any direction with these actors at the perfect time and see snow and trees and, you know, the fog of their breasts.

That's, you know, so not just the actor. And you can't deny the effects. I mean, it looks. Yeah, it's true. Amazing when he does it because they're there and they're miserable, you know. It really works. It does feel immersive. One of the major problems that the movie ran into was Inuritu wanted to shoot the movie in sequence. So for anybody that doesn't know, although I think our audience probably knows at this point, but most movies and TV shows are not shot linearly, meaning they are not shot scene by scene as you move through the script. They're shot depending on the location so you can grab all the content you need from one location. Or like actor makeup or, you know, and by most. 99.5% probably. It's a massive money saver.

It's a massive time saver. It can potentially be a continuity saver. Maybe not. Actually, shooting linearly might be better for that. Shooting linearly is like, we'll double your budget. Yeah. Is the rough napkin mess for most movies. Now, maybe the Revenant was different because of how the movie actually plays out.

They don't return to a lot of locations. So number one, they shoot in sequence. Number two, the decision they make is to shoot everything in natural light. Terrence Malick, baby. And a lot of it they want to shoot in Magic Hour. Terence Malick, baby. Which means with all of these super complicated action scenes or battle scenes, they only have this very narrow window to do it.

30 to 45 minutes at sunrise and then 30 to 45 minutes at sunset as like a napkin math rule for how much time you get in Magic Hour. Napkin mass by Chris Winterbauer. That's the title of this episode. That's a nightmare. That is such a short amount of time. And also, like, if you have not seen The Revenant, what Laos talking about, there are extraordinarily complicated set pieces, particularly, I think Chris mentioned, the first 15 minutes of the movie. So this battle scene at the beginning took two weeks to film because of this. Multiple sources say the film started to spin out of control very early when they shot the battle scene over two weeks.

Supposedly, originally it was going to involve about 30 trappers and about as many Native Americans, but it expanded to 200 players, which left little time for the crew to prepare. At one point, Inuritu decided that a naked character should be dragged along the ground. Yeah. Which is in the movie.

When we watched it, as that battle scene is starting, you see this naked man being dragged on the ground. There's also another naked man walking straight up. There's a couple of horse. Yeah, there's a couple D's in this. Yeah. I'm cool with, you know, I support. I support the D. More D's in movies I support.

However, it is incredibly cold for these actors. This is a quote from the Hollywood reporter. Crew members were concerned about the naked actors' genitals laying down being slid across the ground. Oh. Inuritu supposedly asked the actor if he was fine, and the actor said he was prepared to try another take, which in a way sort of lets the director off,

but when you're a powerful filmmaker and you're asking these basically background actors to do this thing, they're not going to say no. Good moment to highlight. There's a role that I feel like people outside of Hollywood like to make fun of on film sets that has come into the existence in the last three years. It's called an intimacy question,

You can think of this person in the same way you would think of a stunt coordinator keeps the actor safe from bodily harm during stunts as well as stunt people. And an intimacy coordinator keeps the actors safe both physically and emotionally when they're performing intimate scenes. It could be nudity or some sort of sexual act with another actor. And there's been a lot of pushback from older, especially male actors. Oh, it gets rid of the spontaneity. You know what's not fun?

having someone spontaneously do something that makes you deeply uncomfortable while you're being filmed while you're spending $1,000 a minute, and you have the biggest director in the world calling action, like you said, Lao, there's an enormous power. It's not just the power imbalance of the director. It's the power and balance of there's 200 other guys in costume waiting with an entire crew behind them waiting, and you've spent $400,000 on just today. And if we don't have it, oh my God, I guess I have to do it again. Otherwise, I'm ruining this for everyone else. It puts an immense amount of pressure on one person. Obviously, that's why the director and then the intimacy coordinator or the stunt coordinator needs to protect the actor. But if then you have the director adding pressure,

I mean, it becomes an impossible situation for the performer. Okay, so are this man's balls intact, yay or nay? They are supposedly intact. Okay, good. So when this article was published, the union representative for the film came out against the film as well. He said, it's not clear to me that when crew members raised concerns, they were taken seriously. Oh. He says, I feel the need to represent my crew because I feel the position taken in the article was one of, it's all worth it because the picture looks really good. And that's a very dangerous road for any of us to be on and to buy into.

In Your Ritu would argue that everything was safe. And they did some things that were slightly shifty, but it was all for the immersion of the film to make it as authentic as possible. Luckily, nothing too serious seemed to have happened. But that's when my alarm bells ring is when a filmmaker is willing to put their crew at risk to make something feel as realistic as possible when it's a film and you can fake it. Yeah, it's never worth it. Unless you're James Cameron and you just kick the camera operator out of the helicopter and you get on the camera yourself and you go, get me as close as you can. You're a maniac.

And you, like, if Inirichu was willing to be naked, dragged behind the horse, face down, that's true. Then I'm like, you know what? That's okay. He can do that. He's capable of making that decision. Go for it. But yeah, there are a lot of terrible stories about not just crews being asked to do unsafe things

sunset, but work on safe hours, and they're going home tired, and Hollywood is a terrible history of car accidents on the way home from shoots because people fall asleep at the wheel. So even if In Uriu's right, from a technical perspective, nothing was wildly outside the margins of general safety. If you're creating a culture of the movie Trump's All, image trumps all, that's when mistakes start happening. Yes. What are some of the other safety concerns. It was a little bit hard for me to find information specifically about a number of things. But one thing I did find was Inuritu in an article with The Guardian when they asked him if it was worth what they put the crew through and how dangerous it was. And this is what he said. I can feel now

how far I was from reality when I decided how this was going to be made. I'm glad that I made that irresponsible decision, but it could have been really bad. You know what I mean? Like when you climb Mount Everest and nobody dies, but we were so close. It's that feeling of relief. So this is, I've listened to your podcast a lot in the last few months because I've become a huge fan and I've heard a lot of true horror stories where things actually went horribly, horribly wrong. And this movie is an example of one where it seems like it teetered on the edge a lot. And luckily no one was harmed in a transformative way. but he put his crew at risk.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So that sets off alarm bells for me a little bit. Okay, so because of the way they were choosing to shoot this movie in natural light and in sequence, it took them a lot longer than they expected. They were sort of finding the shot on the day a lot. That's what you want to be doing when it's like negative 10 degrees. Yes. Yeah.

So not far, you know, into production, the budget. skyrocketed well past 60 million up toward 95 million. Oh. Crew members said that they saw a huge turnover, including many who were fired and others who quit. They say that the behind-the-scenes drama led Eniurito to bar producer Jim Scotch de Paul, who had worked with him on Birdman from set. Do we know what was behind that? From what I was able to gather, Scotch to pole was blamed for planning poorly and failing to

communicate problems to Inuritu. Specifically to tell Inuritu things like, we can't do that. Let's not travel 15 miles off of the road to find this beautiful location when we can find a beautiful one, two miles off the road, et cetera. So they had worked really well together on Birdman, but then things fell apart on this. Scotch to Pole was barred from set and then replaced by a different producer midway through production. Wow. About all of the firings, Inuritu says, as a director, if I identify a violin that is out of tune, I have to take them out of the orchestra.

Now, I understand how difficult these things can be, but when his creative decision is to film the movie in natural light and in sequence, he's sort of, in my opinion, bringing these problems onto himself when you have 300 crew members and actors who have a certain salary and all of these different things. things. When you have this many shoot days and that add more shoot days, I think that's probably why the budget started skyrocketing because every day on set costs so much money. Another big problem with the revenant was the weather. When they started filming, it was incredibly cold. And they shot very little windows during the day, just a few hours for natural light. toward the end of the film, they needed to film the climactic sequence in snow. And this is the climax is Tom Hardy,

slow walking away from Leo until eventually they stab each other a bunch of times. So slowly, though. It's a, it's a brutal, like, just, does either guy really want to survive this? I actually liked that. That was one of my favorites. No, I thought it was great.

It was shot, I mean, it's an amazing sequence, but it's just, just so brutal. And it's like out in the middle of nowhere in the snow by a creek with, yeah, it certainly didn't seem like it was close to any roads. I'll say that. No.

And the one thing I'll say about The Revenant is that I do like the scenes in it like this where I feel like it goes out of its way to make it as sort of mundane and weird as these fights really would have been. Like these does not look heroic. Yeah, it's not like elegant or epic. It's just like they're grunting

and biting each other's ears off. Yeah, exactly. Kind of gross. It's like really slow and awkward. They don't know karate. No, no, exactly. Yeah, there's no like skills being exchanged here. It's just brutal and painful to watch.

So the movie is set in South Dakota, right? Because that's where it really happened. They filmed it in Calgary. But in the spring, halfway through production, they have to stop what they're doing because they ran out of snow. No. Leonardo DiCaprio won the Oscar for Best Actor for this movie. And he gave a really lovely speech explaining why they had to search the world to find a new place to film.

Friends, I love you dearly. You know who you are. And lastly, I just want to say this. Making The Revenant was about man's relationship to the natural world, a world that we collectively felt in 2015 as the hottest year in recorded history. Our production needed to move to the southern tip of this planet just to be able to find something. snow. Climate change is real. It is happening right now. It is the most urgent threat facing our entire species and we need to work collectively together and stop procrastinating. We need to support leaders around the world who do not speak for the big polluters of the big corporations, but who speak for all of humanity, for the indigenous people of the world, for the billions and billions

of underprivileged people who will be most affected by this for our children's children and for those people out there whose voices have been drowned out by the politics of greed. I thank you all for this amazing award tonight. Let us not take this planet for granted. I do not take tonight for granted. Thank you so very much. So what went wrong? Climate change went wrong.

Wow. The ultimate what went wrong for all of us. For everyone. And this movie. Exactly. It's a good speech. Yeah. It was the hottest year on record in 2015, but it's now been passed every single year since then. So it continues to get hotter and hotter. And they did, yeah, I remember they relocated to, didn't they go down to like Argentina? I think the tip of Argentina. Yeah, down in my Patagonia down there, which is an incredibly beautiful part of the world. But very depressing that you have to travel from the top of one hemisphere to the bottom of the other in order to find snow. There's a behind-the-scenes documentary about The Revenant on YouTube, a world unseen.

And in that documentary, you can see before they left to go to Argentina, they were trucking in tons and tons and tons of snow to fake locations. And it's bizarre to watch dump trucks as far as the eye can see carrying in snow from colder locations. Wow. Well, China Winter Olympics, 2022. Yeah, ouch. This is part of why the movie's budget ballooned so big. So I said it went from 60 to 95. Do you guys want to guess how much the movie ended up costing altogether? Yes, yes. I'm going to guess $100 and $130 million. You're close. I would guess $1.25. 135.

Oh, wow. I was almost going to guess that. You didn't. So this really bleak art house action movie ended up doubling its budget and becoming so much more expensive than almost anything that gets made today, other than superhero movies. Yeah, that's insane. Yeah, Robert Eggers, The Northman, infamously went from 60 to 95. He says, the studio said only 80, but I'm going to take the director's word when he let it slip in an interview. But that would be, they went then another 25% of it.

beyond that in this movie. Yeah, yeah. Something. Okay, so I want to talk about Leo in this because he is really, really trying. Yeah. Well, so for those of you who don't remember 2015, Leonardo DiCaprio, poor, poor, poor Leonardo DiCaprio had had a hard life. And the hardest part of his life was that try as he might,

no matter how many incredible performances he turned in. And boy, did he turn in some incredible ones that deserved an Oscar, frankly, a lot more than this one. He just couldn't get his little hands, normal, probably normal sized hands, around an Oscar. And so famously, and to be honest, I think this is the reason I avoided this movie

is that I was so aware of the narrative that this is Leo's Oscar bait because he had made some Oscar baity movies prior to this. Like, he was clearly trying. And this one was the biggest grasp at it that I just, I didn't really want to watch it. And in watching it, I will say this before we dive into Leo. I think my biggest complaint about this movie is that I wish it was not huge name actors in

the two lead roles. Because the whole time I was just like, it's Leonardo DiCaprio. Like, I can't, there's no suspension of disbelief in watching him drool on himself and drag himself across a forest. Like, it's still Leo. I just can't. I could not get past it. I would agree with you that.

I think this is the movie that gave the Oscar to Leo based on all the other movies that he's made. Which is what they always do. It's always like an achievement award. It's never the actual best performance. Yes. But the thing that he did do is he put himself through hell. He had to get into a icy cold Calgary River, probably for multiple takes. He had to get naked and crawl inside the prosthetic carcass of a steaming hot, dead horse.

horse. He had to do so many strange things. I have a clip from the Today Show where he's talking about really what got him the Oscar, basically. Okay. Here we go. One of the things you do in the film is actually eat a real bison liver. I wanted to believe that that was a prop, but it was real. Why did you push yourself to do that? It's not like anybody would think, boy, what a lazy performance. You You take that extra step. Why? The Native American actor that I was working with, his name is Arthur, and he was eating raw bison flesh the entire day during rehearsal, and they gave me this gelatinous sort of red pancake to eat, and it just didn't look real.

It didn't look authentic to me. I wanted to get the real thing, and it was this giant liver that was incredibly disgusting. My reaction is very much up on screen, which is a nauseating one. Fair to say you've had your last bison liver? Oh, I'll never do that again. I'll never do that again. Yeah, Chris, you're totally right. All he was thinking as he won was,

I really could have done less. I will, once, like, it did elicit the right reaction. He has a very genuine visual reaction. I will say, though, in terms of it not looking right, that scene for context is in the middle of the night. Yeah. And he is backlit by a fire, and you can barely see, like,

what's in his hand. So I'm not convinced that the pancake wouldn't have looked fine on camera either. Just so much spittle. Yes. Okay, so I want to read you guys the thing that I found in my research that made me the happiest. Okay. Because in listening to your show, you guys get these juicy morsels a lot that are just so funny and wonderful. Sometimes interviews with people where they're being very honest about stuff and I was dying to find something. I didn't quite find that, but I found this super bizarre article

about the bear attack scene. I'm not going to lie, that brought the lulls for me. Yeah. It's ridiculous. It's absolutely ridiculous. The bear is 100% CGI. But the sound effects are so goddamn brutal. They're so horrific.

And his skin is coming off. And then after, He cauterizes his neck with gunpowder, and it's horrific. It's all just so uncomfortable and brutal and good for them, I guess. Yeah, I mean, what I said to Chris was if I wanted to watch someone get mauled for half a movie, I would have just put Roar back on. But, I mean, it's so long. It is good, but it is like a 20-minute-long mauling sequence.

Yes. And I wanted to know how they did it. So I googled how did they do it? I googled Glenn Ennis Bear suit, because Glenn Ennis is the same. stunt man who wears the suit. He is wearing what looks to be a gigantic blue telitubby outfit. Yeah, sure is. And in my research, I found this incredible article that I have to read quotes from for you guys. Okay. It's from The Express, which is a, as far as I can tell, a British tabloid. The most reliable of news sources. Most reliable source. The title of the article was,

How did they do that bear attack in the revenant? Meet the man with his face in Leo's ass. All right. I mean, to be fair, that is true. Very true. That is what happened. Yeah. So here's some quotes, just random quotes.

Glenn Ennis is the man in the bear suit. Yes, the very man who had his face in DiCaprio's butt. Journalism at its finest. It's amazing. Ennis says, I was supposed to grab his jacket with my hand to make it look like the bear's jaws were pulling it. In order to have the bear's jaw in the small of his back, basically my face was in his butt. That's because the bear's mouth is above, like the bear's head is on top of his head with the costume. So to put the nose in the small of his back, he's eating his butt.

He's going white lotus back there. Or the staircase. Oh, yeah. It's been a big year. a lot of time rolling around with Leo, but it was all consensual, he told the global news. My face was in Leo's butt a fair bit of the time. I can see how that's someone's fantasy, but it wasn't mine. This is a very weird interview. Oh, my God. Keep going. Keep going. The strapping 51-year-old. Okay. A little old for Leo, by the way,

revealed that the notoriously perfectionist director Alejandro Inurito was particularly about every aspect. Even though it was a big smurf bear, it still had to be as authentic as possible. That's amazing. Wait, okay, I have another question for you, Lau. So maybe you're about to get this, but Tom Hardy is in this film. Now, I think anybody who's ever read anything about Tom Hardy is aware of the fact that he can be a little off color. Did he do anything on this set? Because he has a history of punching, yelling, fighting, leaving Charlize Theron in a tank for hours in the desert. Yes. So actually, Tom Hardy, notoriously difficult actor, this was a notoriously difficult set. From the little that I was able to find, there was some tension between Tom Hardy

and Inuri, too. No, Tom, never. Yeah, years ago, I read on Reddit, and it was, was a random post and it was unsubstantiated, but that Tom Hardy and Inuritu came to blows on the Revenant, and Tom Hardy choked Inuritu out. However, they came out and said afterward that it was playfighting, that they were just goofing around. Oh, no, they definitely fought for real. If they had to address it, I think. It's only happened a few times on sets, to my knowledge, where, to my knowledge where directors and actors have physically gone at it. Like David O. Russell and George Clooney on Three Kings, that's confirmed. George Clooney has said, I just knocked him on his ass. Ed Harris and James Cameron as well. Ed Harris and James Cameron, yeah. How many? What's the percentage of them that are Tom Hardy?

Like, got to be like 70 plus. To make amends or to sort of make it into something fun and funny for the crew, though, on movies at the end of production, the crew always gets a rap gift, and the wrap gift is almost always a t-shirt or a sweatshirt. The crew's rap gift was a t-shirt with a picture of Tom Hardy choking in your E-2. No. Really? That's a may. That's hilarious. You can find it online if you look it up. We should order these t-shirts. Wow. That's a collector's item. Yeah. It really is. Ritu and Tom Hardy are both fiery people. Mm-hmm.

And something happened. How much of it was play fighting and how much of it was real? I don't think we'll ever know, but we do have the T-shirt. So was this big catastrophic film a hit? It was a huge hit. Mm-hmm. The Revenant grossed 183.6 million in the United States, and then 349 million in other countries for a worldwide total of 533 million against the production budget of 133 million.

Wow. against the production budget of $135 million, which was double its budget. That is wild that this movie made that much money. Well, that's why you cast Leonardo DiCaprio. Oh, I know why you cast him. And look, he does a great job in this. Yeah, I mean, it's like the Northman, I think,

is similar in a lot of ways in the sense that, like, that is a brooding, heavy period piece, right? But it has, I think Alexander Scarsgrad is a great actor as the lead, but he does not have the same. Leonardo DiCaprio is a true, I would say, top five known person in the world, you know, from Hollywood. It's Tim, Tom Cruise, you know, you can think of a couple of others. And that just gets people in the theater. I think it also helped the amount of press that was leading up to this, that made it very clear that, like, this is Leonardo DiCaprio's most intense role ever.

But it's his most intense role. You see what I'm saying? It's like, because it was the same thing with Scars God. It's like his eight pack has never been more jizzled. Listen, I would give Alexander Scarsguard every Oscar for the Northman. One for every pack in the eight pack. I loved it. No, he was great.

And that movie was really, I liked that movie a lot. But I do think like that appeal to international audiences, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. It made $340 million worldwide. That's crazy. That opening action scene really helped too, I feel. like. Yeah, I mean, the trailer was basically snippets of that followed by some, you know, Leo crawling and stuff. And that alone, you're like, okay, wow, great action, Leonardo DiCaprio. Yeah, I'm going to go see this.

And I want to see it on the biggest screen possible. Yeah. And then after that amazing battle scene, the movie got really slow and it turned into a two-hour slog. But other than being a commercial success, it was a critical success. It has a 78% positive rating on Rottenham. Tomatoes. It won three Oscars out of 12 nominations. Best director for Inuritu, which was his second consecutive win after Birdman. He's the third director to ever do that in history after John Ford in 1940, 41, and Joseph L. Mankowitz in 1949 and 1950. It won Leo, his coveted Best Actor Award for the first time finally. And then it won cinematographer Emmanuel Lubeski, also known as Chivo. deserves. He also won back to back, right?

Three. He won three in a row. It was gravity, birdman, and the revenant. Wow. By the way, if you are in Los Angeles, there's actually a very cool exhibit. I think it would still be there at the Academy Museum that does focus on Chivo, Emmanuel Lubeschi, the cinematographer for the Revenant. It's a pretty cool section, and there's like a giant wall-sized picture of him shooting one of the like really weird sort of like muddy stream scenes. So if you haven't checked out that museum you should and you can definitely see a little bit more about him there. Lowe, you have definitely wedded my appetite for more Tom Hardy shenanigans. So I think I might have to start finally looking into Mad Max Fury Road because that was the same year as this movie.

And listen, if Tom Hardy can choke out Alejandro Gonzalez, Signoritu, what is he done to Charlie's sarin and the entire cast and director of Mad Max? I would love to hear that episode. It's going to be your fault if and when it happens. Any final words before we get to a what went right on The Revenant? I used to be a PA, and I worked on a few sets, and I worked on some sets that were absolutely wonderful. And I worked on some sets where, from the top down, people treated the crew badly. There's a special place in hell for me for sets where crews are mistreated or are put in

very awful situations, and I don't think this movie is the worst offender by any means. but I do think they didn't need to go to the lengths they went to to get the movie that they made. I mean, it comes down to exactly what you said at the top of this, which is that when the director has made it clear to everyone involved that the final product trumps any personal or professional concerns, it's not going to be the most fun to work on, regardless of how amazing the end result is. And this does look great.

It did incredibly well, but was it worth it? Ask the man with his nose up Leo's beehole. I think he would say yes after you read those quotes, but you never know. I think he would say absolutely yes. I got to see something. Very few people get to see. All right. Well, let's move on to one of our favorite segments of the show, which is, of course,

what went right. You got one, Lau? I do. I do. So I could say a few things. I could say the craft that was involved in the making of the movie because it's like everyone, every department really did an amazing job, makeup, cinematography, locations, All of it's incredible, right?

I would say Tom Hardy. For one reason and one reason only, if Tom Hardy was not in this movie, this movie would, to me personally, and if you listeners get upset with me for this, I'm sorry, this movie would be borderline unwatchable because it's so serious, so self-serious. I think you're right.

Every time Tom Hardy is on screen, the movie is fun. I don't know what accent he's doing. In fact, because now I've seen Mayor of East Town, I was like, oh my God, he's doing the Philly accent. He's doing the hogies and water accent, even though he keeps talking about being from Texas. But I swear to God, he's doing the rural Pennsylvania accent. It's called the Delco accent. The Delco accent.

That's it. That's it. He is. He's doing like if a Cajun man were trying to do a Delco accent, that is what Tom Hardy sounds like in this movie. I did a little bit of this for Aaron Lowe's partner before this, but this is my impression, as many have done before me, of Tom Hardy and the Revenant. It's going to go right over there on and tell me how he. It's that.

It's a lot of that. I think if I put subtitles on, maybe I would have been less enraged, but I was just yelling at my TV. What are you saying? Okay, but yes, you can't. I was engaged. I was highly engaged. You can't understand what he's saying half the time,

but you can't take your eyes off of him, and he is electric. He's electric. He's got an electric comb over. He has a hot little musk rat hat. I love that. Yeah, me too, man. He's so weird in this movie. He makes the movie exciting because you don't know what he's going to do.

And so for me, if Tom Hardy wasn't in the movie, even with the beautiful cinematography and the amazing craft on display, I wouldn't really like the movie. And I like it because Tom Hardy is so strange. I'm with you on that. I can get on board with that 100%. And you're right. There's something very unpredictable

about how much of a garbage can he is in this movie. And that's kind of fun to watch. Chris and I were texting a little bit ahead of time, and he's very much a 19th century fuck boy in this. And so is that French guy. There's a lot of vintage fuckboys in this. And Tom Hardy is certainly one. Little Poulter.

Yeah. Well, actually, I was going to say, We've talked about the craft, the costuming, the cinematography. I think that's all well-deserved and is sort of a given what went right on this. It is beautiful. I really like Will Poulter, and I really liked Will Poulter in this. So he will be my what went right. I feel like he holds his own as a very, like, natural and sort of sweet performance

next to Tom Hardy, who, as we said, like, is just bizarre. And then Linar to DiCaprio, who is like drooling, can't talk, like laying on the ground. Then there's just Will Poulter holding his own, giving like a very normal performance. And I thought he was really good. Such a sweet boy. Yeah. Yeah.

What about Chris? Well, I would agree with both of you. I thought, I mean, Tom Hardy's great in it. What I think he understands about the character is that, and I think this is probably true of people at this time, is that they really thought they were going to die at any moment. And so they just lived their lives as if they just, he doesn't, he's just didn't survive.

He's like, there's no such. thing is morality. The law of nature like applies and he doesn't take anything too seriously while at the same time being willing to kill anybody to survive. It's a great dual performance. It really it's good and Will Poulter was great. I thought all the actors were really good. I'm going to do something different. I struggle with a lot of the things you guys mentioned with this movie in terms of the story and I disagree with the approach in a lot of ways because it sounds dangerous and I don't love when things are dangerous. It is exceptionally well directed. This movie is Like, the director's responsibility is, at the end of the day, what you see in the frame.

And there is not a single frame in this movie that you couldn't frame and put up on your wall as a piece of art. And I'm not excusing anything that would have put actors or crew in danger. I'm not even saying it justifies it. But for me, what went right? I think he, I don't think this movie should have won, you know, and didn't for best screenplay. you know, for example, I have a lot of problems with the story, but it's so well directed. I watch it, and I'm not a huge fan of the tone in a lot of ways, but the tone is incredibly well maintained.

Yeah, it's very consistent. Yeah, so it's like, even though I don't enjoy watching this movie, I don't think it's not meant to really be enjoyed as you watch it necessarily. I do think it's a remarkable achievement in a lot of ways. And obviously, that's the different departments doing their job. jobs. But, you know, the guy can direct. And if you haven't seen his other movies, he is probably, I agree, Lau, very narcissistic. I've listened to some interviews as well. But he's remarkably talented. And the movie looks, sounds, you know what I mean? The performances, it's pretty great

across the board from, you know what I mean, in all of those respects. If you can hold your nose at some of the white savior issues that we've talked about. I mean, to be fair to you, like I would agree, I think that Inuritsu is on almost genius level as a filmmaker. Yeah. I think he's that good. And I love some of his other films. It's almost unfortunate because you're like, if you could just figure out a way to do it that didn't require, you know what I mean?

Yeah. That's where it almost is that disappointment where it's like you're so good. Can you not do it? You know, can you not be sitting in a met and like figure out a way to do it where people are safe as well? I think we're going to get to that a bit more in this. season as well because we've seen that backlash towards directors, I think, a lot in the last decade or so. And what's interesting is we're now also seeing it towards method actors. Jeremy Strongs.

Sure. Yeah. Jared Letto. There's a big pushback on artists in this community of sort of asking, like, why does it have to be so real? And I think that's an interesting question that I definitely want to keep exploring because I don't know. I don't know if it has to be so real when it's a movie. But I agree that this is incredibly well made and it looks beautiful. I want to give one final shout out to a cast member who was a shining beacon of light for the maybe 10 minutes that he got to be on screen. That is Arthur Red Cloud, who is the actor that was just eaten Buffalo all day in a rehearsal. He is so delightful. He's not on screen enough. I will tell you that. And they just kill him with no fanfare, which I was really pissed off about. I'm guessing he had an originally that was a longer

sequence and it got cut down is my instincts. He's so fun and funny to watch. And just watching, I could have watched him eat snow with Leonardo DiCaprio for like 20 more minutes. I really liked him. So maybe I'll split my what went right between Will Poulter and Arthur Red Cloud. Lau, thank you. Thank you for finally getting me to watch The Revenant, which I had avoided for many years. I am glad that I've seen it. I do really appreciate that. And I appreciate all your hard work researching it. and thank you so much. A friend of the pod for coming on. Now, before we go,

is there anything that you want to plug for our millions and millions of listeners? Sure, guys. Thank you for inviting me on and letting me punish you with this movie. And I'm an editor, and right now I've been helping out my partner, Aaron, and her theater company,

edit a teaser trailer for this short film they're making called Epinephrine. If you search epinephrine, Don Pat and Tom, theater company online. You can find a link to it, and they're raising money right now to make a longer form short film. And so it's something we're all really excited about. So thanks for letting me shout it out, guys. Go donate. I've donated. So again, that is epinephrine short film. The theater company is Don, Pat, and Tom. Thanks so much for being Hillow. Guys, as always, give us a rating and a

review over on iTunes. We got a good one recently. This is from Mimbo. This one's for you. Does anyone else sometimes play the opening theme a couple times on loop before actually listening to the episode. Just you and David's parents, Mimbo, but we love you for it. If you guys are out there, give us a rating interview, and remember, send us your recommendations. We will be

knocking those down this season and hopefully getting you some very special guests soon, someone that was on one of our earlier episodes. I can't say anything more in case it falls through. I'll tell these guys as soon as we stop recording. Okay. Get out of here so we can hear about this person.

All right. Bye, everyone. Bye. What Went Wrong is a sad boom podcast, presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Editing music by David Bowman with cover art from Euthan Uyos.