Brazil

The year is 1985. This is a black eye for the department, Lowry, and I don't care how you behave when you weren't records. Information retrieval is an executive branch. We are proud of our reputation and we protect it. Dammit, Lowry! That convoy of personnel carriers is still not accounted for. I thought I told you to deal with it. And what the hell is this mess? An empty desk is an efficient desk. The movie? Brazil! Hello everyone and welcome to... Unspooled! Yes, welcome to Unspooled. This is a podcast about good movies. Critical hits, fan favorites, musties, and incasium-istums. We have covered the AFI Top 100 and now we are checking off movies from three major lists. The Letterbox Top 250 films of the most fans, the IMDB Top 250, and the New York Times 1000 essential films. And Amy, we'll also be chasing our own curiosity. That's right, wherever it may lead us. And this week is a prime example of that. We'll explain why in just a second. I am Paul Scheer, I am an actor, writer, and director, and I am forever scarred by seeing Catherine Helmand in this film. Because I only knew her from Who's the Boss. And when I was a kid, I saw a clip of this movie on TV and I was like, What are they doing to Mona? Why is Mona getting her face pulled? It really upset me. I did not understand that actors were in other projects besides the ones that I was obsessed with. And I was very disturbed by Mona's facelift. God, I love Catherine Helmand. And I will again seize this moment to say, Watch old episodes of The Sick Come Soap. If you have not, she's amazing in it. Oh, so good. Hello, I'm Amy Nicholson. I'm the film critic for The Los Angeles Times. I am a proud member of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. They are the hero of today's episode with wings and suits of armor flying in and slaying dragons. It's one of the coolest things I think we've ever done. Wow, I love that. On Schooled. Amy, let's get into it. The year is 1985 and it is time to take Terry Gilliam back to the future. That's right. We have covered him on the show before as one of Britain's best comedy troops. You can check out our episodes on Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Monty Python's The Life of Brian. But, wait, how did this guy born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, wind up as the only American in Monty Python? Well, that part of the story starts after Terry Gilliam graduates from Occidental College in the 1960s. Back then, he's the aspiring cartoonist. He's got long hair, a degree in political science. He's dating a girl. She's a news reporter. And then while they're living in LA, the Watts Riots happen in a quick recap of that. Some police officers pulled over a young black man. They hit him in the face with a baton. Tensions in this town are already very bad. Now they explode. The National Guard arrives. Six days later, 3400 people have been arrested and 34 people are dead. Wow. Now, how does Terry figure into this? Well, his girlfriend at the time is a reporter and they go to Watts to cover the story. And over and over again, the cops keep on grabbing Terry and throw him against the wall for looking like a drug addict. And Terry said before that, I thought I knew what the world was like. And then suddenly it all changed because of that simple thing of being brutalized by the cops. And I got more and more angry and I just felt, I've got to get out of here. I am a better cartoonist than I am a bomb maker. He moves to England, makes cartoons for Monty Python, plays the comedy parts that no one wants to play because they involve too much makeup and costuming. And then he gets interested in directing. He co-directs Holy Grail in 1975. He pitches in but doesn't direct life of Brian. Then he does his own movie Jabberwocky in 1977. Time banded it's 1981. But the whole time he's doing this, there's this other story that he wants to tell that's inspired by a history fact that he has learned. During the witch trials in England, the government made the accused witches pay for everything, including the firewood used to burn them at the stake. And he starts thinking about the guy working in that courtroom who has to take notes on these receipts. This witch, oh, should we burn her, charge her family? This is how much the wood cost? And he thinks, what is that guy's life like? Like, does he know he has an awful job? And then the rest of his movie idea is kind of vague. It's a bunch of ideas just about how much he hates authority. He's thinking, I don't think I'll ever get to turn this into a movie. It's too much. But when Time Banded is a decent hit, Hollywood suddenly very much wants to be in the Terry Gilliam business and he thinks, oh, I'm going to seize this opportunity. This is my chance to make Brazil. And actually, as the year 1984 was approaching, I liked the idea of doing something that was possibly doing what 1984 did in 1948. Now, Terry needs help turning Brazil into an actual script. So he reaches out to the playwright, Tom Stoppard. Now, we just talked about his award-winning script for Shakespeare in Love. And Tom jumps in and starts to shape Terry's ideas into a cruel and cerebral story. But Terry wants to put more human warmth into it. So he works on the script with Monty Python actor Charles McEwen. Now, Charles played the blind guy who got thrown into a hole in the life of Brian, which he said, Terry always found very impressive. Yeah, Charles was very humble about his role in writing this, but I think he did a lot. And he had to. This is a lot of movie. I mean, the basic plot is this. A government worker named Sam that is Jonathan Price chases after the woman of his dreams in his dreams and then in reality. And then while he does that, he wakes up to the idea that he is living in an authoritarian state. And everyone that the system has an issue with is called a terrorist. Even if the only thing they've done wrong is be the victim of a government typo that switches their name from Tuttle to Buttle. Now, there is a Tuttle, a rogue repairman played by Robert De Niro. And then there's an innocent family man named Buttle, who gets arrested at the beginning of the movie. Now, Buttle's upstairs neighbor Jill, that is the literal girl of Sam's dreams, even though in real life she is a short hair truck driver played by Kim Christ, who is trying to find out what happened to the nice guy downstairs. Then there is Sam's well connected plastic surgery obsessed mother, Ida. That's Catherine Helmend, Mona obviously from Who's the Boss. And his old pal, Jack, a very nice successful guy who happens to be the government's top torturer. Who is, of course, played by Michael Palin. The film takes nine months to make and it gets distributed abroad in February of 1985. No problem. Totally fine. But America is not ready for Brazil. Even Gilliam's experience with the angry religious pickets over life of Brian, they have not prepared him for the fact that Universal refuses to release his movie as is. They think it's too dark. They want him to give it a happy ending. The interesting thing about Universal is its headquarter building looks exactly like the big monolith in Brazil. It's a black tower. And the people in there of all the studios all have to wear gray suits. It's required. So the irony was that we ended up in exactly the bureaucracy that Brazil was making fun of. And they were rigid and they were powerful. They wanted they actually decided the main theme of the film was love conquers all, which wasn't what it's about. Yeah, just like in the movie that he made, Terry Gilliam gets dragged into his own bureaucratic nightmare and told how to behave. We'll get into how Terry Gilliam used humor, film critics, and even Robert De Niro to rescue this film. It was finally released on December 18, 1985. It was nominated for two Academy Awards Best Original Screenplay and Best Art Direction. And Amy, it is one of New York Times 1000 essential films. There is so much to unpack about this film. You know, like we just talked about this movie was budgeted and scheduled for a 20 week shoot. It went nine months. There are multiple editions of this film. I think I know for sure there are three. There are behind the scenes stories that will blow your mind. But at the core of it, maybe the best way for us to start talking about it, because I have a lot of bigger thoughts, is the universality of what this movie is, like the simplest core story of Brazil, because I think that's what resonated to me. And this movie originally was going to be called 1984 and a half, right? And then another person released a 1984 film and Terry Gilliam's like, ah, let me change that. But it does feel very Orwellian. Yeah, definitely. And Terry Gilliam says, there is so much 1984 here, although I actually never read 1984. I find surprising, but he seems to have held to that, even though there's so many 1984 references in here. There's a lot of lines about this form 27B slash six. And that number comes from the fact that it was the address where George Orwell wrote 1984. He was living in an apartment at 27B Canterbury Square on the sixth floor. But instead of giving this movie a date a year, 1984, Terry Gilliam has always said that this movie takes place everywhere in the 20th century. I'm almost describing the university that you're feeling here. He says that it takes place on the Los Angeles slash Belfast border, whatever that means, whatever that means is his quote, not mine. Well, I don't think this movie needs a place or a time because I think where it is really caught up is within the bureaucracy of society. And one scene that really jumps out at me, especially in the time that we're living in right now, is a scene where Jonathan Price is having a lunch with his mom and her friends. And basically an uprising happens like terrorists break into the restaurant and the waiters just put up like a little curtain around their table and they go on with their lunch, totally oblivious to the terrorist state that is going on around them. And that happens so much throughout this movie. This idea that, you know, those who can can easily turn a blind eye to what's going on in the outside world. I mean, that's, I think, something that we're talking about so much right now. I think that there's also this idea of bureaucracy, right? All this idea of the paperwork and what you need like one of the first, you know, moments in this movie is the woman of Jonathan Price's dreams trying to find out information about her next door neighbor, but she doesn't have the right form. She has to go down and get another form to get that form to get this form. Right. This whole movie is just about passing paper, not actually doing anything. And when you look at the signs and the streets, it's all about how we are being watched and how we should be happy. And when you look at the world, it is completely utterly devoid of color. While it's fascinating to look at, it is kind of disgusting to be in. Well, yeah, let's jump right into that bomb sink, because I would love to talk about that more. I mean, right before the bomb happens, they're even talking about like medical care in a way that I find so chilling. Listen to this. I saw the most wonderful idea for Christmas presents at the chemist. Gift tokens. Medical gift tokens. Oh, that sounds normal. It's good that any doctor is in most of the major hospitals. It's also accepted for gynecological examinations, including cesarean section. I'm sorry, but my little wasp said it never really happened to us. I'm going to tell you about it straight away. Will you listen? Look, you don't do something about these terrorists. It's my lunch hour. Besides, it's not my department. The idea that presents should be healthcare feels like we're one step away from that right now. And then when this bomb goes off, what I find so striking is it's not that this movie is saying necessarily that the privilege, which definitely his mom represents and he is like kind of a nepo baby, even though he's a little bit too lazy to take full advantage of his privilege. It's not that the privilege are immune because there's plenty of rich people who are gory and bleeding out and dying all around them. But it's this idea that nothing's that bad if it's not happening to you until it happens to you. You don't care. Yeah, you know, I think that there's also this simplicity here. This is a movie where society has broken down. It's not just that there are terrorists in the street or revolutions happening. It's as simple as getting your air conditioning fixed. I mean, that really is the centerpiece of this film, right? Just the act of fixing an air conditioning unit can create a panic that literally could put you in jail. Well, yeah, and that panic part is what I find really interesting because I think when I first watched this movie in college, I thought, oh, cool. All right, it's like a satire about bureaucracy, so much red tape, blah, blah, blah, right. I get it. But then you get to that level you're describing. Why is everybody in such a state of panic, though? Why is his boss so scared that he's going to get called out for making a typo and then arresting the wrong guy when he doesn't feel that bad about the guy? Just the idea that he made a mistake and they're not supposed to make a mistake. This refusal to admit that you could ever have done anything wrong and the panic that might come from having to admit that this whole gigantic system maybe has flaws. There's a moment too where anyone who is against the system is labeled a terrorist, right? Like, I remember watching this and kind of popping up because there's been so much conversation going on right now with anyone who stands against ICE, you know, is a terrorist. And this idea that the society labels anyone who's against it greater than someone who has an opinion. They are a terrorist. Yeah, and the idea of terrorists is terrifying even to somebody like Sam. Like, Sam is not a bold hero. Sam is like, oh no, I'm totally bought into terrorists. Yeah. Doesn't it bother you, the sort of things you do in information retrieval? What? Suppose you'd rather have terrorists. How many terrorists have you met, Sam? Actual terrorists. Actual terrorists? Yeah. Well, it's only my first day. And there's a slippery nature to the film because of that, because I don't think I could tell you for sure if any of the characters we've met are terrorists or not. Sometimes I'm like, is De Niro a terrorist or is he just a guy trying to do his job without dealing with paperwork who happens to be really good at zip lining? I mean, he's a guerrilla repairman with a zip line, right? I mean, he doesn't seem to do anything violent. Yeah. And then you start wondering, are there even terrorists or who is actually blowing up people? Right. Could it be a form of keeping people scared for control? Well, I want to talk about this as well because you talked about panic. And this movie does normalize panic, right? There's these propaganda posters like, don't suspect a friend, report him, right? And mellow fields, top security holiday camps, relax in a panic-free atmosphere, right? Like, panic is a part of the society, right? Because if you think differently, you are wrong. Or if you do anything uniquely, you are wrong. I mean, we are in a world where the amount of paper pushing and the amount of bureaucracy is, it's automatic. People don't even know what they're doing. And I think that that's really interesting if you go back to the Nazi Germany comparison of, you know, oh, they didn't know that they were Nazis. They were just doing their jobs, right? They were just working in that was in that film, Zone of Interest, right? Where there's just this, I'm being efficient. I'm working. And it feels like everyone is really removed, you know, except for the panic of not working well enough or not producing well enough. But they're not really aware of how they are a part of the problem. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've always thought of bureaucracy as a hassle and only as I've gotten a little bit older and I feel like every day I'm realizing more and more how bureaucracy is used as a form of control. There's a documentary that's been winning a bunch of awards this season, LaFka. We give it our best documentary award called My Undesirable Friends. And it's a documentary that takes place in Russia in like 2021-2022, right leading up to the Ukraine war and then like a few months after that. And it's just about a bunch of journalists trying to do their job. And what you see is how much bureaucracy is used as a way of controlling them because they're called my undesirable friends because they have been labeled foreign agents by the government. Because they're just like, they're foreign agents, even though they're Russians, even though they're working for a Russian news site, because the government declares everybody saying things they don't like to be a foreign agent to make people suspicious of them. And like, that's level one of the problem. But level two of the problem is that once you're declared a foreign agent, every time you say anything, every time you post on Instagram, every time you do a news report, you have to announce that you're a foreign agent. And there's this really big block of text you have to read, like declaring you're a foreign agent. And that's so that if you ever screw it up or if you ever don't put it in the right place, then they immediately can arrest you. It's using bureaucracy as a form of control. They can like grab the leash at any time. And then they don't want to actually tell you the rules because they want you to mess up. Well, there's this element here where, and what you're describing there too, it's like this banality of dystopia, right? Like this idea, like it's just accepted. You have to say this thing and then you'll be okay. And we, I think that that's the thing that's so scary and probably so prescient about this film, which is like, oh, like, I saw a political cartoon the other day where it's like, no one's going to announce that they're fascists. Right. It just like we are living. You start to live in it. Right. Like it just happens. Right. It becomes accepted. And this movie is showing it's it the world they live in is boring. It's bureaucratic and it's accepted. And I think that that is scarier than people rising up. It's like, no, no, we're just living in it. We are adjusting to it. The adjustment to it, I think is a scary part of this film. And I think that's what makes this movie have this longer tail to it. Yeah, because it's about living in it when you're a pretty milk toast person who's definitely not a hero by any ways and means. I mean, Sam is a guy who like flat out is like, oh, I just like to keep my head down. I don't want to do anything. If he drives a modest car, his mom wants to give him promotions and he doesn't really want them. He's not a guy who's going to stand up against the system and he would have lived his entire life like this. Unless something happened to just change it. Unless a fly lands on a piece of paper which turns something into a typo, which turns his upstairs neighbor who also isn't that engaged. She's a truck driver. She likes to watch TV until they take her downstairs neighbor away and then she gets involved. Like accidents get you shaken awake. Other than that, you would just stay the same. Well, this this movie shows that human life is not really important, right? People are just being processed like paper. And there's so many titles. There's so many titles. We don't even see there's like a gazillion titles. We have no idea who they are and what happens to them. Neutral Fall now offers hair growth supplements tailored to men at every age because the root causes of hair thinning change over time. And your routine should too. Neutral Fall men for ages 18 to 49 help improve hair growth and achieve thicker, fuller hair in three to six months. And new Neutral Fall men 50 plus is the first and only hair growth product specifically formulated for men 50 plus. 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This is a brutal rules light nightmare with a story that emerges organically based on the decisions that the characters make. This is what it felt like to play RPGs in the 80s and man, it is so good to be back. Join the Glass Cannon podcast as we plunge into the shadow dark every Thursday night at 8 p.m. eastern on youtube dot com slash the glass cannon with the podcast version dropping the next day. See what everybody's talking about and join us in the dark. Welcome to the realms of peril and glory. Explore the mechanically magical vistas of veil, the paranormal mysteries of liminal London, and the cyberpunk chaos of cyborg. Be awed by our incredible guests from familiar shows like Ox Venture and No Rolls Bard. Search realms of peril and glory to find out more. And I do want to talk about this film beyond its political leanings because, you know, just to put it in context, this is done during Reagan and Thatcher, right? There's no war on terror. This is just this idea of a future that we could live in. Is it very aware of like how we would be living post 9 11? Absolutely. And I found it to be chilling. In this period, I keep on saying that, but it was a really important movie to watch right now. I felt. But I do think that this is not a reactionary movie. You know, I think that this is what's going on with one battle after another. I do believe that that movie. Could have been made in any other year. I think there's universal themes there. It's connecting to people in a major way because they're seeing some of those themes played out in their life right now. But these are the stories that I think we are constantly, you know, dealing with in society. Yeah, I think we're realizing that maybe there's just something about the human temperament that is very prone to getting along. Right. I mean, you know, and not again, no spoilers for one battle after another, but that title is true. There's no end. There's no victory. It's like, what's the next thing? And what's the next thing? And do you live to see the next battle? I mean, in a very general sense without trying to spoil anything. But like we're constantly at war. Yeah, but I mean, I think that's a fair point. That's why he doesn't call it violent. That's because it won't battle after another. It's a really pointed change. This is just how humanity has been. And again, this is a beautiful movie to look at too. Right. This is a movie that is fanciful and crazy. And I forget how much I love Terry Gilliam. You know, he has been one of those guys who for many years has just been sidelined his projects. You know, there's a great documentary about his want to make man of the mancha. He feels like a guy who is constantly getting kind of handcuffed, you know, very similar to the story we told the beginning. And what's like he's being thrown up against a wall and shaken down at every given turn. But his beautiful idea is this movie does feel like a Monty Python film. You know, there I think you can't separate the two. I think because he's a part of it, I think time bandits feels like that as well. But this design here, I mean, it's like Art Deco, but futuristic. It looks like nothing that you've ever seen. It looks a little bit like Metropolis, right? It kind of feels like Kafka. And then it goes on to influence so much, right? This style. It's definitely coming out of like German Expressionism and stuff, but then it goes into Batman, like a hud sucker proxy, delicatessen. I think even Super Mario Brothers, you take some of its look from this, the Bob Hoskins version of Super Mario Brothers, not the new one that I thought was really terrible. I mean, also just because you've got like Bob Hoskins as a plumber. I mean, here's Bob Hoskins in that movie sounding like this could just be an outtake from Brazil. Uh-huh. Plumbers! No, he is. I'm just apprenticing. Get in the car! But I didn't do nothing! Get in the car! Are you telling us that you're going to arrest the guy for being a plumber? Get out of here! Get in there, plumber! No! Hey, what is this? All right, all right, what do we do? I'm going to arrest him for being a plumber! I love that. There's a filth, right? Yes. Like a wetness and a filth and a sense of everything being alive. The ducks are alive. Yeah. I mean, one thing that this movie couldn't quite have predicted is that we would have a system of ducks everywhere. They're all over our houses listening to us breathing, except it would just be wireless. You know, that's one thing I find really fascinating about the design of like just on the other side of 2000's sci-fi, is they thought our world would have more and more wires. And instead, everything just became invisible. Right. Invisible internet, invisible emails that are coming in and like yelling at us like the tubes are here, that relentless tube, tube, tube sound just sounds like my inbox. And here's what I'll say. What this movie does really interestingly is like the tubes are primarily behind walls or, I mean, they're out and about as well. But the idea that like it's happening and I think that like that invisible nature of how this stuff is coming in. So there is like this idea of like when they open up the wall to see the air conditioning, you see all that stuff in there, right? But you could close it up and not. Right. And that's what I think the non-wires do for us. We're not seeing those wires so we don't feel it, right? Like it's the same idea. It's like, even though it's being funneled in. Yeah. And I love that commercial right at the beginning where they're talking about the ducks and they're like, Oh, ducks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Your ducks can be individual. To be highlighting the idea of these ducks as individual tastes, instead of distracting from the idea that everybody is forced to have them, like that's not individual when you're forced to have them. You could just make them look a certain way. And by the way, that intro that you're watching this commercial through a TV and then suddenly the store explodes. I love that because it feels like that idea also gets like picked up and put straight into Children of Men, right? The shock. Yes, yes. There's so much of this film and I want to, I don't want to derail us too much, but I will in a little bit reveal a bigger idea that I have about this, but I want to talk, make sure I give this film, it's just desserts. But there's so many of these influences that you see. And that really felt like, wow, you can tell how Gilliam has created this style and this style, which I thought was interesting. I was reading about this. It is called retro futurism, right? The idea of what would a forties filmmaker think of the future, right? That's kind of the style that he's going for. And I think that that's why the color palette is more black and white, you know, monochromatic than colorful. But I love that idea, like that he created this term. Yeah. And that it's happening also around the time of Blade Runner, which is doing a similar thing, that 80s does forties. I mean, and I think that you look at Deckard's apartment and you look at Jonathan Price's apartment and they feel the same. They feel like, it feels like he's the low class version of Deckard, right? Deckard's world looked a little bit cooler, but they feel very similar. Yeah. And I think the making of them felt really similar. I mean, part of why Terry Gilliam was like, you will absolutely not change my ending is because he had just seen that happen to Blade Runner a year or two before. And he was like, you gave that film a dumb ass happy ending. That to talk about another movie that goes a zillion different iterations over the years, you will not do that to me. I will fight twice as hard because I just saw you do that. And I think that this fight of what this movie is is one of these really interesting stories. Because this is a time where the studio really could control this, like this final cut. I do think that, you know, when you look at this film, I don't know how you advertise it. I have no idea because it feels in many respects like a madcap comedy, right? It has like, it has a has a an engine like that. There's certainly action and it's weird and it's funny, but it's unwieldy too. I think I was saying the other day, like it's not a perfect movie, but it kind of is a perfect movie. Like it's messy, it's sloppy, but it's like there's so much there that it's you can't help but just look at it and be like, well, yeah, you've done something here that changes filmmaking for decades to come. But at the same time, it's not it isn't a perfect film. I think especially, you know, in that like that second part of the second act, it gets a little it starts to lose a little bit of its momentum, in my opinion. Well, yeah, one thing I find that dovetails really well in this movie is that it's hard to completely hold on to what is happening in a way that feels like an accidental and purpose point even about how nobody even living in the world of Brazil is able to hold on to exactly how bad the system is exactly how bad things are going. It's like everything is so large and messy and chaotic that you get lost even within the own film, even within your own city, even within your own corporation. And I don't think that's a thousand percent on purpose, but I think it adds to kind of the feeling of the movie. So let's talk a little bit about these cuts as he's putting together this movie as well because there are three cuts, the European cut, which is 142 minutes. And that is Terry Gilliam's like that's the one he wants that opens with the time and location credits over a black background. And then there's the American theatrical cut, which is 10 minutes shorter, 132 minutes. And that's where Terry Gilliam kind of cuts brings everything down. And that's the one that includes the clouds in the open and the beginning and end. And that's the one I've seen. And that's the one that kind of retains Gilliam's like a story arc, but there's like a few kind of things cut out. And then there's the Love Conquers all edit. This is the the Scheinberg edit, which is 94 minutes. Okay. From Scheinberg is the head of Universal, by the way. Yes. So this cuts many of the scenes. It removes elements of the film's darkness. You know, it is it's it made it clear that like Jonathan Price does conquer over evil. It's a dream at the end. And at the end of the day, it's only ever been released as a bonus disc in the criterion DVD release. Well, and when you look at it, it really just takes that kind of idea of Sam and Jill going off into the farmland and like raising chickens or whatever. Like, oh, yeah, we're fine out here and it ends it there instead of being like, no, no, no, he's absolutely screwed up in the brain and he's being electrocuted to death. And it got me thinking the ending that they make fun of for Brazil, the ending that he didn't want is basically the minority report ending that feels kind of silly. Well, this by the way, Amy, this is what I wrote down. I wrote down I was like, I need to talk about Minority Report because I was like, that's the Minority Report ending. And then I was like, yes, exactly. All the pre-cogs, suddenly they're like, yeah, now we can raise chickens. What? Well, and so what I really found interesting is when I clicked into that ending, I was like, wait a second. This whole movie is Minority Report in a certain degree, right? Because it's somebody who is doing something in the system, not really looking at himself and the role that he plays. And then the system turns on him. And then it, you know, it not exactly the same, but it's a surveillance state. It is a person doing their job. And then it turns and the ending is the same. I mean, beat for beat. There's a lot of similarities. Yeah, you're fine with it until suddenly it happens to you with the twist that in the Minority Report version, everything turns out fine because he actually is a hero who can take care of things. Right. And it's maybe not the correct ending, honestly. Yeah, I think that, you know, what's so Orwellian or Kafka-esque about both of those stories. Or, you know, like, are, is that the society wins, the house wins, right? No matter how much you fight against it, they're stronger. They'll take you down. And that's not uplifting. It's a film, right? You know, it's like, you know, like, and, and it does feel, you feel cheated. And I remember watching this film last night, I had not remembered the ending. I really didn't remember a lot of this film. And I was like, oh, interesting. Okay. And then that reveal, it's such a gut punch that he is, you know, being tortured. He's in this, you know, military silo. He is, he is lost. He is no closer to anything. But then you see him happy in that reality. And I was thinking about that too. It's like, is that a good ending? Is it least he's happy? Well, you know, what's funny is there's a lot of interviews you can read with Terry Gilliam where he goes after Spielberg. Even before the minority report thing. Because he doesn't like that a Spielberg movie, he says, gives you a happy ending that it answers all of your questions, that it solves things. That he really believes that movies should just create questions and leave you unsettled and make you answer them for yourself. So I think it's very funny that minority report did like the anti him. Like, almost the exact same movie except I solved it and everything's fine. Like he flat out, I think is making fun of stuff like that in here where you have these visions of Sam flying through the air with his giant wings. Looking like a comic book hero like Gilliam has flat out said in the past, comic book heroes do not solve any of the problems of real life. They could inspire you. They do not solve anything though. Although that said, I should also add Tom Cruise really wanted to be in this movie. Like Tom Cruise really wanted to play Sam. Oh my gosh. He was like desperate. And this is this is a very early Tom Cruise. This is Tom Cruise right after risky business pre pre top gun. Right. So Tom Cruise, Terry Gilliam has said that he called him up crying on the phone crying on the phone being like, I really want to be in this movie. But that he was refusing to do a videotape screen test because he had this fear, which I think honestly, maybe correct that someday in the future that he couldn't predict his old auditions that he did on videotape would be released to the internet. And he never wanted that to happen. So he refused to do a videotape thing. And when Terry Gilliam just kind of held the line and was like, no, if you do not do a tape, you cannot be in this movie. He instead went to London to do legend with Ridley Scott. But he was like, apparently it was like, I need to work with one of these great weird British commercial directors. That's really fascinating. I mean, look, and we know that when he did legend, that really was the moment where Tom Cruise changed his entire career. He was not going to be uninvolved in a movie like either I'm not going to do fantasy anymore. I'm going to take they're going to be a producer. Like he really wanted to go in. I actually, yeah, he really felt like when he did legend that that was a mover, you could pop his character out and it didn't really matter who was playing him. That he if from here on out, he was only going to play roles where the actor was integral to it and not just a prop. And it's interesting because Gilliam seemed like he wanted Tom Cruise and it feels like there's this loggerheads here because Jonathan Price. I've heard Terry Gilliam say was too old, right? Like, and there is something about that character. Like there is something more interesting, I think about a youthful person, you know, obviously the relationship with his mom. There's something sadder about Jonathan Price. I think there's something more interesting about a younger character there. Yeah, I think it adds actually something to make him old. I kind of like it because then you feel like this guy's just wasted his life inside of the system. He becomes more pathetic. Whereas a young guy, it's about being young and getting disillusioned. Well, he's already been defeated by the system, right? There's exactly. It's the Tom Cruise in my own report. Like it's the hero. Like and I think where the ending might hit harder because the hero loses, you know, you know, I don't know. I feel like this is another example of Terry Gilliam trying to get a movie made, not getting every piece that he wants and still turning out. Because there is also he's famously has big issues with his leading actress in this, right? He does not like Kim Christ. No, he said that her audition was really great because she auditioned on tape and that her audition had this kind of feral quality, which I think you get a glimpse of in the car. She's a little bit when she's truck driving with him, a tiny bit Furiosa. But he said once she was on set that strange energy she had, he couldn't get it out of her again. Yeah, I think that that is a part of the movie that really doesn't work for me. You know, and this is a film where he tested a lot of people to play that part. And it's interesting the amount of American people that he tested, right? Because it was people like Rosanna Arquette, Ray Dongchong, Jamie Lee Curtis, Rebecca DeMorne, another risky business star, Michelle Pfeiffer, Kathleen Turner, even Madonna. Apparently, Terry Gilliam's favorite person was Ellen Barkin. Who would have been, I think, really good because she has just an innately feral quality. Yeah. And, you know, and so I feel like there is something that doesn't work there because you really want her to take over the film. And she does plot-wise, but I don't feel like she takes over the screen, which is a harsh thing to say. I hate to, you know, nail that, but I, but I, but it's like, I think that that's why when the movie starts to lag for me is when she starts to take a much more active role in the film. Well, yeah, it's interesting that I feel like he had a female character kind of floating in and being that ethereal figure in his next movie, Baron Munchausen, and he cast young Uma Thurman, who did have that quality. And it made her career that she was so magnetic on screen. And yeah, it's kind of wishy-washy here where where I get more interested is that Sam imagines her as like ultra femme with like long blonde hair. And in real life, she's got the short, tough hair and that she's like, it made me think a little bit of that, of the scene in Shakespeare and Love where Gwyneth Paltrow dressed as a boy with a mustache on is like, why are you talking about this lady and her pippins, man? You're like romanticizing women too much. Well, guess what I say one thing? You know who loved her? Sheinberg, because he restored a lot of the scenes that Terry Gilliam cut to get her back in. And I think that speaks to her performance, which is lighter, smaller, more not romcom, but but sweet. And and that's not what that character is supposed to be. She does have that one really great line when he comes back and he's like, congratulations. I changed the system to make it say that you're dead now. And she does this. Care for little necrophilia. I mean, that's really funny. Yeah, a couple of beats after that, her character dies and that never registers for me. I know. I didn't feel that either until like after and I was kind of putting together my notes. I was like, oh, right. But I think it speaks to the fact there's two things at play, right? I think that's the director who's not really loving his actress and is trying to edge her out. I think that you could make an argument and this is maybe a long shot, but like the dream girl isn't as good as the dream, you know, which is something. But did you hear this one bit of information about her and DaNero? This is the thing I love is and I want to talk about DaNero a lot. But DaNero comes onto this film and he originally wants to play like the Michael Palin part, but they're already cast Michael Palin. So he's like, OK, I'll take this title part, which I think he does a great job. It's a really fun performance like 80s DaNero, really great. And the balls, by the way, of like being like, here's DaNero, but I'm going to hide him under glasses and you're not even going to really, you every single time I forget that it's him and I have to go, wait a second, that's DaNero. I know what I didn't realize it. And then he started talking. Oh, my God. So I guess Kim Grace had seen DaNero at this point, very method doing like 20 to 30 takes, you know, to kind of figure out what he wanted in that. And so she was like, oh, well, I would like to take 20 or 30 takes, but didn't have that same process. So that also really enraged Terry, which I thought was a very like funny dynamic because you already have this person who the director is not enjoying working with. And then they're like, I know I'm going to take even more time to get something, which just feels to me painful. Like, and this is what I think this production was. It was a painful production, you know, a lot of, a lot of big pieces here. But again, even DaNero doing 20 to 30 takes is total. I'm surprised at. He apparently I think went a little bit too overly method and was driving everybody nuts on stage. Like, yeah, like one of the things is that Terry Gilliam told him that his character does air conditioning repair. Like he's a brain surgeon. And Robert DaNero apparently was like, oh, OK, great. I will go observe brain surgery. So I can do this better. And he did that. He observed brain surgeons to play an air conditioning repairman in this movie where it's just a bunch of veins blowing up at you. Well, and like there was even more where he like been up in his room at four in the morning with his costume on preparing. Right. And it was like, you know, and, and I think that he wanted to get it all right. And there's something about this character. And I'm going to kind of mix in a few different articles that I read here. But it feels to me what Terry Gilliam realizes is. Yes, DaNero is a great actor and he wants to be prepared. But that preparedness is to not mess up. He wants to be great. And being in a movie where there is no baseline for what he even is, it was harder for him to come in as equipped as he normally does. So I think he was very vulnerable in this. But can we talk about his last scene, though, because that is something that comes out. Gosh, almost like it was like an idea that could have been in the whiz, right? With how the whiz was like Oz, but junky and strange and York and trash and litter everywhere. That suddenly papers just stick to him and then he dissolves. That is such a beauty. Like that's what's so interesting about this movie is like your chate. Like he's dissolves under paperwork, right? To a certain degree, right? It's like, or I don't know. I feel like that's like the erasure of humanity, right? Through paperwork. Oh, now I really think about how sad it is compared to how much he hates paperwork. Yeah. Couldn't stand the paperwork. Paperwork. Couldn't stand the paperwork. Listen, this whole system of yours could be on fire. And I couldn't even turn on a kitchen tap without filling out a 27 B-stroke 6 bloody paperwork. I suppose one has to expect a certain amount. Why? I came into this game for the action. The excitement. Go anywhere, travel light, get in, get out. Wherever there's trouble, a man alone. Now they got the whole country sectioned off. Can't make a move without a form. That makes it feel like it's like a saw thing or something where the thing that kills you is the thing that you hate most. From the parents behind law and order comes a mystery the whole family can enjoy. Patrick Picklebottom, everyday mysteries. Step into the whimsical world of Patrick Picklebottom, a precocious 11 year old with a love for reading and an uncanny ability to solve mysteries. Inspired by the beloved children's book of the same name, this podcast vividly brings Patrick's tales of deduction and everyday adventures to life, as he unravels baffling indigmas and solves clever cases. Patrick Picklebottom, everyday mysteries is perfect for kids and is just as entertaining for grown ups who love a good mystery. The whole family can listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Goodbye Kyle! Did the sound of those words call to you like Pavlov's dog? Then you might enjoy our podcast Turtle Time. Every week you can join me, Riley Hamilton and my co-host Amy Scarlotta as we cover the most pressing Bravo news and dig into the new episodes to answer important questions like, who the hell is Adrian Maloof in this world? Listen to Turtle Time on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday. On Schooled But he goes out there and they call out Sid Schineberg and they're like, this guy wants to wreck the movie. Like, DeNero opens this movie up to all of his critical circles, right? All of his friends. He allows this movie, I think, at that point, he uses all of his power to get this film seen. Well, yeah, I mean, one thing that was happening is Universal put an injunction, I think, against this film even getting seen in America. And so people like Gilliam, people like DeNero, were offering to take critics and drive them across the border to Mexico where they were allowed to watch it. That's wild. I mean, think about that. Like, this film is being treated like an underground terrorist idea. Like, you couldn't even see the movie. Which is how my group, the Los Angeles Film Critics gets involved because he shows it to us secretly. I'm not even sure how I should ask some of the guys, isn't it? Because they're all still around, a lot of them. You know, once you're a film critic, you're a film critic for life, man. Like, you don't really divin it out. You're like, hello, this is my job until I die. But yeah, he shows it to the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, his cut of it. And we wind up awarding it Best Picture, Best Screenplay, and Best Director at our awards that we announce every December. We usually announce our awards, you know, around like Pearl Harbor Day, first week, second week of December. That's why this movie comes out on December 18th. As soon as we gave it all of these awards, Universal's like fine bluff called and they just released it immediately, like the next week essentially, without even making a poster for it. Wow. I think it's really interesting because there's so much lore about this movie. And the movie, I think, plays into this idea that they had a villain of a evil corporation, you know, who was trying to dismantle it. I mean, Gilliam called Sid Schineberg a terrorist, you know, he want like it made this movie something that you had to see. Like you said, you're traveling across the border. It felt important. And I do think it was interesting looking at some of the letterbox thoughts after I watch it. You know, people are like, oh, I saw it. I wanted to be more moved by it. I thought it would be bigger. I thought it would be this. This is a movie that I think carries a weight like a 2001 in the sense of like it's in a pantheon of like, I don't even know how to say it. Like these movies, like a bespoke film, it feels like it has a place in society that's elevated above just a good movie. And I think part of it, like it's some total of its parts, not just the movie, it's the story behind it. It's the way it was released. It's the vision of the film. It's this kind of, you know, this, the little engine that could kind of story in a way. And I feel like that's what makes the legacy of this film really work. Well, yeah. And this idea that the way you attack an idea, a system that you don't like can be subversive, can be sneaky. Or as Terry Gilliam says, he won this particular battle with humor. We didn't fight with their weapons. We fought with our weapons. And our weapons looked really silly in comparison because they had lawyers and money and time and all these, this great organization. And all we had was some journalists who wanted to have some fun. And I started having fun with them and making, doing silly things embarrassing. And we won because they couldn't control everything. Also, we should say Terry Gilliam's sense of humor. Really funny. Here's some explaining why he named his company, what he named his company. I'll let him do all of the talking. I love cocking a snook at authority. I've got a company called Poo Poo Pictures. And the great joy of that company is that lawyers and accountants and very important, serious, reasonable people have to sit down and talk about Poo Poo Pictures. If you want to Google, you could see the letterhead of Poo Poo Pictures. There's a couple of pictures of it online. It has beautiful font, the spelling out pictures. And then there's a guy climbing a film strip that's sort of looking like a ladder leaning against the side of the of the part, the paper. And he's got his naked butt sticking out with an arrow. That's amazing. And I wish I was that smart. Now let's talk money, right? Because this movie has a budget of 15 million, right? And even though it is nine months, it comes in less than 15 million, right? And Universal contributed 9 million for domestic distribution and Fox added the rest. And this movie makes 9 million, 9 million in U.S. and Canada. And so, you know, when you think about this movie, I didn't know, is it a flop? Is it a hit? It kind of is this movie that, you know, lost like 5 million, but did recoup like more than half of its budget. And it kind of has its life, right? And even though it's a commercial failure, it kind of continues to go because, like you said, the LA Film Critics really get it out there, but it doesn't have a real big opening. It kind of opens at like $30,000, you know, it's nothing. Universal's panicking, but it's a movie that kind of goes out and grows and grows and grows and grows and grows. I mean, it also came out, like you said, on Christmas, not a great Christmas film. And I feel like, but at this point, it must be making money, right? There's money here. I mean, I think so. It feels like an essential film that you have to watch. You just have to have watched Brazil. I mean, it feels like a factual thing, you know? Do you think it's good? Like, I mean, like, like, like just taking away everything, like, is this a good movie? Yeah. Yeah, I think it, I think it like it is. It's like, I feel like for all my faults with it, like the little things, I think that the sum total of the actual film, like what it's saying, what it's doing, what it's trying to do is so impressive. A thousand percent. It is so dense. You know, it has just ideas and ideas and ideas and like layers. I mean, there's a level of this film that's just about how the technology that we use to make our lives easier is making our lives harder. You know, that's just a fact that's in this movie from 1985. His clock is so high-tech that nothing works. He's trying to eat his toast in the morning and the toast is having coffee poured on it. I mean, it's kind of like the opening scene of Back to the Future where there's that giant Rube Goldberg machine making Doc Brown's breakfast. Except the point of that one was that Doc Brown's been out of town all the time and that's why the dog food is stacking up. And here the point is just like, oh, no, no, this giant machine doesn't work. And the idea that everything is high-tech and nothing works is something I complain about every single day, that has just become more relevant. And he extends that to the idea that the world doesn't even care if anything works. It just cares if things are done correctly by the book, by the form, so that everybody in charge can feel like they covered their ass. And if they don't, then they'll come to your house and they'll leave everything broken. You know, this idea of nobody having your back and nobody looking out for you, it feels more and more real every day. And that's just one of the ideas tossed in here. I feel like you could freeze frame it and just pull out a thousand essays. You know, you're driving across the country and the smokestacks that are huffing gas into the air are painted like blue clouds. You know, that's about environmentalism. It's about how we cover up environmentalism. It's how we pretend things are pretty. We put a nice coat of paint on things. And that's just a frame. And then it goes on. I mean, it's such a dense movie. It really is. I don't know. Maybe there's even an essay on like why Bob Hoskins' baseball hat is so tall. What is that? You know, I also think in addition to the story, it like we talked about the the art direction is amazing. And the way that this film is shot, you know, is also really interesting because, you know, it's like he's using these, you know, not like a, they're like different than fish. I like the 14 millimeter lens, which has now been called like a gillium because that's what he uses for most of his films since Brazil. Like it gives us weird distorted version of reality and faces. And I feel like, yeah. And then it becomes the MTV look to me. Yes, 100% feels like the 80s MTV. Well, I think that what you're probably seeing is film director, you know, music, video directors kind of embracing this. Like, how do you do this? This is, you know, this is, you know, like you talked about Tom Cruise wanting to work with commercial directors, commercial directors make music videos. Like there's this idea like they can play in this format. I also just love the legacy of this. I think you can see it. We talked about it, obviously, in Minority Report and Batman, you know, Matrix and Pie, you know, the that the form 27 B slash six. That's in the last Jedi. Ryan Johnson has like that parking violation is that and it's in Jupiter's sending. Yeah. When he gets out of an elevator that feels too small for him, that feels like being John Malkovich, you know, this movie has been so influential. I mean, even the character that has an office next to him when he makes it to like the higher level of promotion that they're fighting over this table that keeps getting like yanked back and forth through the wall. I mean, it's a little bit cartoon. It's a little bit Milton from office space. Like, do you find it at all? I don't know. Cozy making to think that humanity has always just been this wild that maybe our generation isn't the worst. It's just always, always wild. Well, that's what I kind of feel in bringing into this year about one battle after another. It's like, oh, right, we are always, we are always in a moment of feeling like we are just a part of a machine, right? And we are part of a system. And there's a like, and I think that these stories are important to tell. And they're not unique. And there's there's actually a safety in them not being unique. It's not the first time. And there may be different levels of that going on, but we are always feeling it. And and in varying degrees like this was made during a time where, you know, Reagan and Thatcher, like you would look back and go, yeah, things seem pretty fine at that. You know, there's this is not in response to anything besides maybe some bureaucracy. Yes, it's Ronald Reagan as a president who's an actor. There are things, but I do believe that like there's a comfort and knowing that this is humanity's story. And it can be told in different ways with different specifics, but this is our battle that we always are going to have. Yeah. And at the same time, I do find it scary that we keep making art about this and yet not changing anything, not waking up to anything. But I don't want to let us off the hook either. No. And I think that that's always really hard to do, right? Because it's we see it, we know it, we say never again, and then we do it again, right? And it's not we. But there's a sense of comfort, you know, like I've been thinking a lot about the cyclical nature of these kind of stories because this year's Oscar race and also last year's Oscar race both had a film from Brazil about authoritarian regimes that went very far. This year we've got the secret agent. Last year we had I'm Still Here. And it's like that country having just had its experience with Bolsonaro finally getting their leader who was in authoritarian out of office, putting him in jail, lovely for them. Talking about how authoritarian regimes happened by going back to one that existed in the 70s and trying to grapple with it there by looking at it in the past. And then us in this country really keying into those films now because it feels like the vibe that we're really on, what can we learn, what can we take, what warnings can we see from these movies. This gigantic conversation that it feels like we're having in particular with the country of Brazil makes me love that this movie is even called Brazil, even though Terry Gilliam wouldn't have said that this wasn't really about Brazil in particular, it's just an idea. That he just liked the song, he liked the theme song, Brazil. He liked the idea of somebody imagining that they were in a more beautiful tropical paradise than in this gray world that they were existing in. But something about it feels too neat because I can't help think, you know, I believe you Gilliam, but I also feel like you know that Brazil is where a lot of the Nazis went. You know that Brazil is going through an authoritarian regime as you were coming up with the idea of this movie. I don't totally believe him honestly that Brazil is just a coincidence. It's like this cheeky song and you know, the one thing I can take away from this movie about behavior is people like order, people like, you know, ways of doing things. The accuracy is the sickness that we kind of fall victim to, right, and that kind of metastasizes and becomes this thing that can overtake us because it makes sense, black and white, and we are increasingly and always have been in a gray culture. But the people who can come and say, no, no, no, this is right. This is wrong. This paperwork is what you need. This paperwork, it makes it easy for people to fall in line because it is hard to have a million different opinions to look at everything as an individual. And this movie says we don't individuality is what actually complicates things. We make everybody a piece of paper and we just move forward on that. And yeah, even after the whole total buttock confusion, his boss is still confusing total and buttock. Still get it wrong. It papers just a way of mucking up the works and you know, slowing things down. I mean, that documentary I was telling you about my undesirable friends five and a half hours long. I definitely do recommend watching it. However, you can. One of the things that happens in there is straight from Brazil, where when the war in Ukraine starts, all these journalists are told, well, you can't call it a war. You have to call it a military action. And if they screw up and ever called a war, then they're in trouble again and they can get pulled from reporting on anything. They can get their whole license is pulled. And that idea of like, no, we're just controlling the language so you can't call a war a war. Right. You're just creating all these rules to try to make either they break them and great you can arrest them or then you get to control what reality looks like. And, you know, and that's and that's it. Like, it's like, if you break a law, it's so much easier than, you know, it's like, that's that's what we get used. That's what we get. We're we're that's a law. It's easy. It's on paper. Right. So, yes, they're controlling us by kind of making us stop thinking about things critically and looking at things individually. And that's this movie does this movie says what if we are just literally a piece of the machine. And, you know, I find it to be a really awesome film and it makes me feel like I wish we had more movies like this. And then I realized, too, like in this year 2026, there are actually some really cool movies out there that are making big choices that are trying to tell more complicated stories. And I actually think that there's been a great year for things like when I think about this movie, I think about Nouvelle Vogue, like, like just like a director trying to communicate this vision, make this thing, you know, and I think about, you know, movies like if I had legs, I would kick you right about a movie that doesn't really give you answers and is weird and big and like we are making these movies. I hope people are seeing them, but I actually don't think this is a moment to cry about, oh, we don't make cool stuff anymore. We do. It's just how do you get at it and some stuff breaks through and other stuff doesn't. But that's okay. I don't think that I don't long to go back and go, ah, we got to go back to this. Like we are. This is still affecting us to this day, just differently. Yeah, we are definitely making cool stuff. It's hard to get people to see it, but we are definitely making cool stuff. We're still allowed to be making cool stuff, which I think is neat. You know, one conversation that Terry Gilliam had as he was getting ready to make this film, I thought was fascinating. Like he said he went up to hang out with George Lucas on Skywalker Ranch. And this is, you know, 80s. This is way before George Lucas would make the prequels and stuff. And they were talking about the Star Wars movies. And he said he realized that George Lucas was describing Darth Vader in the early 80s as he was just a character who was truly evil. And he thought, oh no, our movies shouldn't be saying that people are truly evil. Like truly evil doesn't look like Darth Vader. You know, truly evil looks like that character of Jack Lint that he has here, the one played by Michael Palin, who was like, oh, a nice guy and a family man. And also happens to be like murdering and torturing people. But no, he's lovely or evil looks like the goons who are going around the streets arresting people in this movie who are just like, oh, this helmet. I don't like it. It makes my head itchy. These helmets don't make your scalp itch. Don't mention it. And they make you sweat. Often time I can never see where I'm going. Well, I'm lucky. I've got these thick eyebrows. That keeps it up and channels it out to the ears. I mean, Stormtroopers didn't really get to talk until the recent era of Star Wars movies. And I want to get George Lucas some credit. I think like when he went and made the prequels, not that I've seen them. But I think he did try to talk more about the evil of bureaucracy and how that is actually the inertia and the self-protectiveness is where so much villainy comes. I think he I hear he humanized Darth Vader. Maybe someday he'll make me watch the prequels. I don't know. No, I have no desire. But I like that he probably it sounds like Lucas himself grew up about what he thought evil was. Yeah, there's always going to be an enemy. And I think that we always have to figure out ways to retain our own dignity and fight against it and and make changes. And and I feel like stories like this that don't show a pointed line to something specific actually might be the key to it. It's like way that Star Trek worked in kind of tackling social issues, you know, and I love like I love actually all the stuff that I've seen about Star Trek. This new show Starfleet Academy has come out and everyone's like, you think I go back, but William Shatner back in charge of Star Trek, which obviously never was. But it sounds like you're critiquing a woke show quote unquote woke show for being woke. It's like it's like Star Trek has always been dealing with very big issues in a, you know, in a way that was kind of hidden. And I think that that's come sometimes the best way for people to take their medicine when they don't realize that they're actually watching it like what they're seeing. And you know, yeah, like there's kind of ingesting it and going, why that's wrong. And then maybe they'll see that in their real life. Yeah, I wonder sometimes if part of the way I see the world as just a default, like, hey, individuality is good, even if it's messy, it's sloppy, it's strange, maybe just came from having a steady diet of weird movies as a kid. Yeah. I mean, and I think that, you know, I hope people continue to watch this movie. I hope that it is a film that continues to inspire. And I think it does. And I think that, you know, we will always be affected by this film. This is one of those films that the first one is great and people who have continued to make films that are inspired by this can make their own things. But this doesn't, it doesn't dilute this one. Well, speaking of films that have evolved and changed over time, we're heading into Valentine's Day. There's a movie that I really want to cover, the first of a trilogy that has evolved over time. Yes. I really want to do Before Sunrise for all the lovers out there. I am so excited about that. Let's do this. I am down to tackle this with you. I cannot wait. This has been one we've talked about for a long time. You can find that film wherever you get your films streaming. You can also use your local public library. Amy, what a pleasure. Continue the conversation with us on Substack. It's free. Just sign up and you'll get a thing in your inbox where we kind of break down more and more about the films that we talk about. 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