Die My Love with Alison Willmore

I'm stuck between wanting to do podcasts and not wanting to do podcasts at all. that's great what was that that's my favorite line in the movie okay which is when she's at the party with the neighborhood families yes and the woman asked her what do you do yeah i'm a writer or whatever no no that's not what she says in fact what she says is the thing i just quoted she said i'm stuck between wanting to do something and not wanting to do anything at all yeah you're right that's a good line it's in there it's a relatable incredibly relatable it's It's a real, you have captured something in words perfectly performed by one of our most powerful movie stars that I have never been able to quite get my hands around. Jennifer Lawrence. Is she one of our most? She is, I guess. I'm choosing the word powerful. You can use the best word. In terms of the power of what she does, like her work. Remember how when Angelina Jolie was sort of the number one most famous actress of her age, like was the, I guess, consensus A-list movie star who was a woman of her generation. No question. And like and you would every so often people would be like, she's never been in a good movie or really like made a proper hit. And I would always push back on that. I would be like, no, no, no. You can look at her career and she took like a salt or even a fucking Maleficent. and like you can tell that she plussed it, you know, box office wise. The proper picture is bullshit. A good movie is an ongoing conversation. This is what I'm saying. So does J-Law have her beat? J-Law is sort of the, maybe the Jolie-esque you know, okay, I would say yes, but also I think she has yet to really do the thing that Jolie did, which is to come into a movie and just like blow everyone else out of office, you know, like Girl Interrupted. I feel like in that movie she just comes in and you're just like who is that like she you know right i i would argue that winter's bone was a version of that i mean she's great in that but also it is like a role that is almost like built around uh i don't know like a showcase for her in a way that is i think and it is an incredible one i was gonna say silver lining's playbook does have that girl interrupted energy in it the difference is that the rest of the movie is closer to her level than maybe girl interrupt it. That is not a movie I think is perfect, but certainly at the time as it was received, it was like, that's a movie that got four acting nominations. Have we never really discussed Jennifer Lawrence on the show? I don't think so. Yes, we haven't. A lot to talk about. Because, like, we've never wanted to do David O. Russell. No. Who is her primary auteur. We've never wanted to cover the X-Men series on our Patreon. I wonder why. Yeah, let me just check the Epstein files quickly and see why we don't want to cover the X-Men movies. And, like, I mean, those directors are still clean. One, I don't know. you know, I guess we could do Mother one day. Yeah, although I would argue. Is Darren kind of arguing his way out of being covered? I was going to say, I think our chances of doing Mother one day have been greatly diminished by everything post-Mother. Yeah, I like Mother, though. Still fond of Mother. It is a rich text. It is a movie I am eager to sort of revisit. I do feel like I like this better as a showcase for that angle of J-Law. I wonder if I rewatch Mother Now while I think it's a masterpiece. I was angry when I saw it. I was a little dismissive when I saw it, and then I rewatched and was like, I think I respect the swing here. I kind of like this, you know. I think there's some of these movies, I mean, where you're just like, oh, he's onto something, even if it's not entirely coherent. And also, Mother does feel a lot to me, like a maybe mostly inadvertent confession about why you should not date Darren Aronofsky, which is like, I think... We projected all that onto it, but it's there. It's there. It's there, yes. And I think that that is incredible. Yeah. I'll say this. This is not a mother podcast, but the context in which I saw Mother was a screening at the Metrocraft. We definitely talked about it. Because he was there, right? Yes. He was there and she was there. And I think it was the first time the movie was being screened anywhere outside of... They had done the big New York Magazine profile. Do you remember who wrote that? Whoever it was just kept talking about how they weren't allowed to talk about the movie. That the movie was shrouded in so much secret. They wouldn't even tell you what it was about. No, and they were like, it has interesting metaphors in it. And you were like, what the fuck is this? And the whole profile was Darren Aronofsky being like, people are going to be pissed at me and that's fine. We were like, the fuck is this? And he got up before the movie with a scarf, quite the scarf on, had a real air about him, introduced her as the greatest movie star in the world. There was an energy between the two of them that was a little like, is this the bourgeois dancing on a collapsing Paris kind of thing? And then he said, like, this was a movie about the most important mother in the world, Mother Earth, and how we've disrespected her. And I was like, you just told me the metaphor right before the movie started. And immediately I'm like, okay, yeah, I get it. I was so kind of set up to be pissed off from the moment it started. And I. Oh, he's annoying. I respect it more in mine's eye. But yes, no. I mean, who else would we cover that she has worked with? Like, Granik's unlikely. Frances Lawrence is unlikely. We could do Frances Lawrence. We don't like Frances Lawrence. But like, are we going to do him? Sure. versus like just doing stop this podcast okay Ben I'm sorry stop the podcast what was your first movie this was Constantine with Griffin and David I'm Griffin I would love to talk Constantine by the way great movie whatever you want I'm ready when I interviewed him I interviewed him once and I was like truly like sucking his dick about Constantine and I guess I am legend and just kind of being like man you and he was like I appreciate it but also cradle the ball you know I was just like you actually make you know like really fun Hollywood stuff and like I've just been a long time fan of yours and he was like thank you Like, he was very nice about it, but he was not, like... He was not, like, thank God, finally, someone's being... Yeah. But can I just go back and say... Please, please, anything. When I did Requiem for a Dream oral history... You did? That's right. Yes, yes. You talked to everyone. I did talk to everyone. The fridge? Including the fridge. The fridge is very rude, by the way. I don't know the fridge. There's a reason the fridge was canceled. Also directed an X-Men movie. Darren Aronofsky, before we started, was, like, jokingly, but also, it was, like, can you tell the Vulture editors to stop calling me scarf wearing guy? But they really like to make fun of the scarf. The thing is like do you see him in scarf style? No. No, it clearly is his version of the Eddie Murphy laugh where he's like fine are you happy? I stopped. And now his neck is so fucking cold. It's so cold all the time. What's going to happen to him? I love that that was his explanation at the time where he's like I have a very sensitive throat. Yeah he did. He was like I'm very susceptible That's not a bad impression. I don't know what he sounds like. It's like I have a sensitive throat. I guess, so did anyone watch his AI American Revolution? Only to jerk off to it. No, I didn't watch it. I didn't watch it. I absorbed it. I sat my ass down and listened. So it's he used AI to make a Revolutionary War series. Like web series. That's like reenactments. but it's just like imagine if we could see right you are there he's trying to kind of be like this is what ai is for it's so that yes bringing history to large-scale production quickly and he's watching the trailer i hire oh good it looks like spookily dead-eyed in a polar express it looks like a polar express i watch uh i look at tiktok all the time right and tiktok will serve view AI in the middle of a person being like, look, my baby fell sideways. Yeah. Which is, what is it? Yeah, yeah. Thank you, China. We're still in the place, and maybe this will change when they were, you're just like, I know it's AI. Immediately, there's just a quality. You know it when you see it. Look, that's how I feel, and every time I see some fucker post something and go like, Hollywood is cooked. This is what AI can do now. I'm like, bullshit. It's not good enough. And then I'm also like, what, like six months from now maybe it is and I'm like great so reality doesn't exist anymore. But no, I think it's always been like the way I feel about video games where I'm like it got better and better and better but it never got where we all when we were younger thought it was going to get. I mean it's the Uncanny Valley thing. Yeah. I think it is true. And I'm wrong. Maybe I'll be a fool. That's my worry. My worry is that you will be a fool. Have you seen there's one that keeps going around that's like it took like thousands of people and hundreds of millions of dollars to make like friends and this is what like Sora can whip up right now and it's a super cut of like fake AI friends scenes I've seen this yeah yeah yeah and you're like oh it is weird how real it looks but also they are speaking gibberish and it's like Chandler walks through the door and he's like well I got pizza and then everyone laughs it's very weird because the lines don't make They are speaking English, but not legible English. And they keep walking in and out of doors that aren't connected to anything. And the doors keep moving around. You know, so it's great. It's like a melatonin nightmare. You're like, sort of is real. Like whatever AI app is started to be like, OK, so like 30 percent of friends is people dramatically walking through doors into apartments. It must be about that. This must happen four times per scene. and they have everyone's like tone and the rhythm of everyone's joke delivery right but they don't understand how to build jokes through dialogue and then like none of them look exactly like them all of them look like they're stand-ins but they look like real people and then the Phoebe will sit down and split into two people the second she hits the couch literally like asexually reproducing into two people on a cushion I remember that episode Yeah, it's a good one. The video I got served, which is stuck in my brain, is like some guy who made an AI video as if he were visiting the set of a Dragon Ball Z movie. I saw this. Yes. And he's like hugging Goku. Yeah, so he's basically, it's like as if he had just gone on and everyone were forced to take a selfie with him. And it's all of these incredibly famous people that he has like fan cast as different characters. And people are like, Hollywood is cooked. And I'm like, I don't know, you just seem sad. Yeah, I know. And I'm like, you know, the problem with it is also like, it's like your limit, your, the limits of your imagination are like, I wish they were my friends. What if, what if Goku thought I was cool? What's our podcast? I tried entries and you didn't take the bait for once. I just want to let the record go. I'm so sorry. I missed it. What did you say? You said, let's stop right now and talk about Francis Lawrence. And I said, fine, this podcast was Blank Check with Griffin and Amy. Oh, I didn't. Okay. Okay. Pretty funny. That is funny. Thank you. You're welcome. I'm Griffin. I'm David. It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers, kind of, and are given a series of blank checks, sort of, to make whatever crazy passion projects they want, and sometimes those checks clear, and sometimes they get bought for $20 million at hand and become kind of like, I don't know, a cautionary tale? A little bit. I think a little bit of a cautionary tale, business-wise, yeah. Allison and I were talking about this the other day, and you have not been introduced yet, Allison. Could you introduce her? Hold on for a second. This is more important. Allison and I were talking the other day about how it feels like in the flop fall kind of trend piecing of a bunch of A-list movie stars had sort of prestigy dramas that were given wide releases that were supposed to hopefully cross over to some degree in the mainstream and also to Oscar results completely flatline. and it feels like this was always included in that grouping of, here's a list of five movies in the last eight weeks. With the others being... Christie, Smashing Machine, Roofman to a lesser degree. I feel like there's one more. The Springsteen movie, you could argue. Those are five pure theatrical releases that all had... What did all of those movies in? I'll tell you. It was reviews. None of those really count on with anyone. This is what's interesting to me, is I feel like this is the one of those films that was well-received. It was well-received. Maybe not rave, but it was well-received. People liked it, yeah. All the other ones, like even Christy, the strongest reviews were the like, it's weird that she's this good in this movie that is unpleasant to watch, and why did she make this? It's very long. Right, the positive reviews all kind of had like flashing red lights that weren't really going to draw an audience in. I feel like this movie wasn't turned into a punchline as much, despite it having two A-listers and not converting into serious nominations anywhere. But it's sort of with distance just part of the narrative of, like, what was the weird movie 2025? Sure. I mean, it was ludicrous to put this on. I don't think anyone could really be like, how dare Jennifer Lawrence not make this into a hit? No. Like, in a serious way. It is a very jagged, intentionally abrasive movie. Yeah. And it's a little, it was, to me, it was a little bit more like, oh, movie, like, just because the substance broke through doesn't mean you can do this with anything. Like, you silly goose. But you think, I mean, they also clearly were like, for this amount of money, in the very least, we're going to have bought a Best Actress nomination. I think that's what they thought. And the other part of what's interesting about this movie to me is I just feel like a lot of people I talk to just don't know this happened. And yet Jennifer Lawrence was like as out there as she has been in many, many years. She did get out there. And kept doing it like in the lead up to theatrical release throughout the whole award season. She's not making precursor lists and she's still doing stuff. And all the stuff she was doing was hitting like classic Jennifer Lawrence, where people were kind of like, thank God she's back. You know what? I missed this. And yet none of that energy went back over to the movie. It doesn't. It just doesn't. It doesn't go to the movie. No, that's, I think, the biggest lessons learned from 2025. Like you doing playing operation with Robert Pattinson will not mean anyone sees the movie. They simply watched a fun clip. Right. You gave eyeballs to Variety or whoever. It will monetize that clip. Yes. And it might sell copies of Operation. It actually doesn't get your movie anywhere. Well, I think especially when you're like... And why should it? At best, right. At best, you're mentioning this movie to a bunch of people who maybe, maybe will remember to look it up and then go, oh, that doesn't look like something I want to watch. And that's like, you watch Jennifer Lawrence Kill It on Hot Ones for like 25 minutes. And when she says, like, through tears, my new movie is called Die My Love. It's in theaters, whatever. Right. That basically, I think, for most listeners is the equivalent of, thank you for watching. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. You know, it's just like white noise. You tune that part out. And I think the industry started thinking, well, this is the way to market. This is the way to break through to this audience. And what they don't understand is that those aren't marketing tools. Those are their competition. Who's our guest? Our guest today. From? vulture from the new podcast critical darlings a blank check production the great allison woolmore hello hello oh remain just got pushed to february 2027 wow okay i'll take it off the spreadsheet allison the the seismic waves on our spreadsheets are the scheduling changes that just happened are insane wow it's gone here's a jennifer lawrence thing i would like observation i would like to make. She famously took a few years off, right? And kind of was like, I need to reset. I need to, people are going to get sick of me. And also, like, clearly she was like, I need to figure out what my grown-up career as a movie star looks like, right? And she has, this is what, like her third, essentially soft relaunch, right? At this point. Causeway is like an unbelievably soft relaunch. Yes. But Causeway was like, she was also like, I'm a producer now, right? She's like, I am not just going to be in playing characters that are 10 to 20 years too old for me in David O. Russell movies by God. I am going to take control of my career. She has her producing, is it Justine Chiarachi? Is that her second oldest friend? Yeah. They met in the movie biz. I forget if she got her oldest friend. She was like her assistant on Hunger. Yeah, exactly. And they basically come up together. They seem to have great taste. Yes. The things they produced are Causeway, No Hard Feelings, and Die My Love. Three movies I like. Right. Causeway, unbelievable. And two docs that I don't know much about. Small movie, lost in the sort of post-pandemic morass, does get a Best Supporting Actor nomination, but more than anything felt like, I think what you're saying, a proclamation of, here's phase two. I'm developing material. I'm finding people I want to work with. And it doesn't get noticed much, but that's fine. Then she does... But it got an Oscar note. Yeah. Yeah. It did get an Oscar note. I know. I know, like, also, like, pandemic-y era. I know. But, like, there's so many Apple projects, most of them starring Mahershala Ali. I feel like he was in, like, three. You know, where you like how Mahershala made anything in seven years. Yeah, and then you're like, he'd make so many things. I know. And, like, Cosmic, not a bad movie. Brian Terry Henry, fantastic. Very good. I was going to say, it felt like part of the phase two thing that all the press he was doing for that movie was kind of just pushing him. It felt like, I mean, they had talked about that movie was written to be something very different and he had a very small part and they were like assembling an edit and they were like it feels like the only stuff that's working is our scenes together and they went back and rewrote and reshot a lot of it and she was like this is a two-hander and it felt like part of her this is my next stage is like who do i want to work with who do i want to boost and she uses all her power to basically get him a nomination for a movie that no one remembers yeah and then she makes no hard feelings which was good it was good but she is like look at me doing like a hard comedy right i No, there was a sort of a try hard element to that whole rollout. And then I saw the movie and I was like, I think this movie is sort of a cut above. And I really like like the underlying themes of that movie. I like that. It's about like trashy Long Island, like true, like Montauk lifer people being like, man, it fucking sucks here now. Like all these rich people have moved here. Like, you know, like that's like the undercurrent of that movie is good. I agree. I think that movie fucks up the ending. And that movie's fun. The ending's a little blah. Yeah. But that movie also has kind of a weird reputation because it's like there was a lot of, is this the Great White Hope that brings back the theatrical comedy? Here's Jennifer Lawrence, one of our most powerful movie stars. She hasn't made a commercial film in over six years. Here she's back post-pandemic doing a sex comedy. Yeah. Is this going to like light the world on fire? And it does well. But not the way people wanted it. Immediately explodes way more on Netflix, and people were like, why wasn't this a bigger hit? But then you're like, guys, come on, she was right here. Like, support her when it's happening. Yeah. And then now we have Die My Love, which is the movie that was going to be like, here she is, serious actress, like, doing this, like, really, like, wrenching, difficult, real work, just going places you haven't ever seen her go before. And yet, and again, it does not really get there. No, and it's also fascinating because this is one of her best performances, I think. Oh, I think she's incredible. It's, like, arguable it's her best performance. And, yeah, it's arguable. I think it's in the conversation. I think it also, like, it... It's sort of where, it's how you think of Winner's phone. Yeah, and I think it also, it's so, it's such a deliberately difficult role, right? Like, it just is, like, both opaque, but also, like, so raw. Like, she is both, like, letting you into these, like, incredibly dark, weird emotions, But also, and I think this is a bit of a Lynn Ramsey thing, you're like, you're kept at a distance from her, right? You can't entirely figure her out. And so, yeah, it's, I mean, she has to work with a lot of, I don't know, deal with a lot of different kind of like tensions. But, I mean, she goes, like, she just throws herself in it. I feel wholeheartedly. Also, possibly why Mubi went so, like, goo-goo-eyed at this movie where you're like, fuck, it's funny. like she is so inherently funny and is able to make comedy out of odd difficult things jennifer lawrence even just in her like oversharing press tour way that you're like fuck if you map that onto a lynn ramsey movie does this thing have enough kind of like weirdo laughs like the substance that there's a more commercial push for it but then you're like what's the movie about and you're like well a woman collapses completely deconstructs it's it's a fascinating case and yeah i i think you know she's doing the scorsese movie next it feels like she's being very selective there was this moment a couple months back david where um uh they announced like one weekend of filming that taylor russell was being recast in michael b jordan's very expensive starring and directed by Thomas Crown Affair remake. And in one of our group texts, we were like, okay, thought experiment. Who do you slot in there? If you're Michael B. Jordan, and you're like one of the like kings of 2025, and this is your next directing project, and your chosen female co-star doesn't work, and you need someone on set within like less than five days, and you presumably want someone who you can like go toe-to-toe with, right age level, you know, whatever it is. We were like, who does he pick? And we were throwing out names. and I at one point said like I mean if you really fucking want to go for it you cast Jennifer Lawrence you cast Jennifer Lawrence in the Faye Dunaway Rene Russo part but is he willing to cede that much ego and beyond that you said no and you also said I think she's just firmly in her weirdo phase now I think she doesn't really want to play that game there's an argument that you know her reps would probably be like please Jennifer can you just get paid 20 million dollars to do this and then make three more weirdo movies and it feels like to her credit she's like kind of done with the game want to just use my power to make whatever i want to make and work with what i who i want to work for and with and i also think uh in talking about her like sort of disappearing for a couple years and why there was so much energy and excitement for this movie it's also like she had two kids she like focused on her family she focused on her personal life and Causeway and No Hard Feelings aren't tapping into that. No Hard Feelings is kind of pretending she hasn't gone through the growth that she has talked about in the press. And so when this movie is announced, it's like, oh, well, here's Jennifer Lawrence who seemingly holds nothing back and she's making a postpartum movie. What is she going to share with us? Right, right. This is the problem with being a Jennifer Lawrence, Angelina Jolie-style movie star where it's like every movie has to be like, okay but what is it saying about you right now like you know what what phase of life are you in what era what taylor swift era are you doing now i think it's less that it's like what is the comment you're trying to make or what is the statement and with her it's more especially in her 20s david or russell kept pushing her into these roles that were 10 years ahead of her in life experience. And you were like, I guess through sheer movie star power, I am vaguely buying this woman being widowed, having two children, all these things. And it's just for someone who feels so emotionally intelligent, but was able to kind of render these things that she had no experience with. I think it was more like, is this about to be some level up moment in her ability with her being able to pull from life not what she's trying to communicate to us in the press or how she's going to use this movie to talk about her own personal experiences but more does she have a new well to draw from i think that's true but i think it's also i think we've all been waiting you know she is someone who is this very powerful and undeniable a-list actor but like she has spent so much of her career either yes in these roles that didn't feel quite right for her that she made work through sheer talent with David O. Russell or in these giant franchises, right? Like, at the same time, she's playing a widow and a mother of two. She's playing this fighting teenager, right? You know, she's playing Katniss in The Hunger Games and she's playing Mystique. There is this real sense that so much of her career, so much of the path that made her this giant movie star was also, like, never quite right. You know, like, she was always playing roles that were never quite, they didn't seem like something that were like it was kind of like defining her or like that she really had a full like like that fit her perfectly you know no it's it's odd it is odd for someone who you step back with some distance and her her 2010s is even more astounding by how kind of anomalous it was at a time where the industry was like maybe movie stars don't exist anymore and she became pretty undeniable and yet it was like they they milked that so hard and so fast and the whole kind of like inevitable jennifer lawrence backlash which she clearly in doing press for this movie took very personally and was like i'm too much you know i wasn't aware how people were seeing me it's also just like you break down the years and you're like she was making two or three movies a year and it was basically every year she was alternating between an x-men and a hunger games uh and a prestige movie yeah yeah i just it's interesting on this press tour with now who's that listen so i've listened to she was on polar's thing she did that kind of like late what no late i was saying like she did that fairly recently well i think polar kind of doesn't care it seems as much about like you know timing it to really yeah I don't know she did that kind of like half hour chat with Leo the actors and actors thing which was like you know no one has quite gotten Leo to open up but like she had her moments with him you know like the closest I've seen like a couple moments with him but I'm trying to remember what she sort of acknowledged essentially to one of those David O. Russell I think really taught me how to act, I know that's not the experience everyone has with him. You know, like, and she didn't say it in a dismissive way. She said it in a kind of like, I think it was quite helpful for me. I do know that like the way he works was not helpful for some people. She hasn't worked with him since Joy. I always found... An incredibly weird movie also. I mean, that movie came out early in the history of this podcast. We talk about it a lot on one of our Force Awakens episodes with Emily Ishida because I think I had just seen it because it is indeed a really weird movie and it has all the problems that all the movies she made with him had where she's fundamentally wrong for the role. She's kind of working it anyway. Like, she's kind of like... But then the movie that's happening around her is also kind of chaotic and stupid. I was thinking about... Like, Silver Linings is the best of those movies and I think that's like a really chaotic movie. No, I agree. I agree. We, in the week we were recording this, the most recent episode of Critical Darlings was talking about begonia and emma stone and yorgos kind of getting into that david o russell jennifer lawrence auto lock nomination oscar favorite state and no one was pissed when emma stone was announced as the best actress candidate i didn't feel that yeah i mean people were not like oh yes that's like you know but no one was angry but i can't remember if you or richard said this but the morning that jennifer lawrence made it into the joy five there was a feeling of like Fuck that. And it's that kind of thing that Ben Affleck talks about of like the weekend after Gigli being like, I'm in the worst state my career could possibly be in. I can sell magazine covers, but I can't sell movie tickets. Everyone wants to hear about how I'm fucking up in my personal life and no one wants to hire me. Everyone else can make money off of me. And there's that sort of feeling of like, okay, Jennifer Lawrence, you automatically get nominated every time. People now resent you for it. which just the moment that movie came out it was just like it happened one time too many it's too late everyone wants you to go away now yeah and i mean so like after that she did what like passengers yeah a disaster like just like a really incredibly unpleasant yes one of the most miscalculated like star packaging yeah yes and of course a blacklist script i think yes it's often a very curse thing. I have often contended you read that original script and it's a really good Twilight Zone premise. And it was so buzzy and it was, it necessitated such high production value because of the space thing that everyone in Hollywood thought it was meant to be romantic. That they just interpreted it entirely wrong. Yeah. Right. Maybe there's a better version of that movie with what director? I don't know. I'm trying to remember who the director... Fincher. There was an earlier version of that movie announced. I'm trying to remember if there was a director ever attached, but I believe it was supposed to be Keanu Reeves and Rachel McAdams. And you're like, immediately that makes so much... Those are actors I vastly prefer. The problem is they are not who Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt were in 2015. At that point in particular, that version of the movie died because it was pre-John with Keanu and it was like he is worth negative money. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But you're like the sad haunted Keanu thing. Yeah, that would make so much more sense in terms of what that character does. I know. Rather than Star-Lord being like, I woke you up! Right, right. Like, aren't you psyched? Now we have to live our full lives together. And it's like a Madden Dragon's place. Passengers. Passengers. And then Mother. Which was much like this, like a wide release, like out of the gates that bombed. Yes. And also, I mean, is this... It's similar, right, where they're like, 3,000 screens for this, and the audience is like, no, what? What are you doing? Also, I don't know, it has weird undercurrents, you know, like their relationship, but also like, so much of that movie is just like, tormenting her. It is just like... Yeah, yeah, yeah. That movie is her going... She's actively stressed. She's shouting her head off about the sink not being braced. Yeah. And then the baby, remember the baby? They eat the baby. They eat the baby. As I happily tell people, it is in the eating the baby canon. I hear they eat a baby. I'm into that. They eat a baby as many X-Men directors have done. Is that my new terminology? We have normal and we have X-Men director. Go on, Allison. Well, and then, you know, you have like Dark Phoenix. It's not a movie. Disaster. It never happens. And then Don't Look Up. Yeah. You know? When is Red Sparrow in there? Oh, Red Sparrow. I miss Red Sparrow. Red Sparrow is right before Dark Phoenix. A movie I softly defend, but certainly never cared to revisit. I don't think I ever saw it. I always think of it as her salt. It's her salt. It is very obvious, and she has talked about it, about the sex crimes that were visited upon her. And her trying to kind of reclaim her naked body on screen and her sort of whatever, her sexuality, her feminine... It's an ownership of sexuality. Yes. And it's also like a decent-ish spy movie, but you are kind of like, this is like a Verhoeven movie. And I like Francis Lawrence, but he's no Paul Verhoeven. And like, this is not quite nasty or freaky enough, but it is like an R-rated, sexy, kind of violent spy thriller. And so you come away with kind of like, okay, you know, I ate an okay sandwich there. You know, I know that could have been better. But when you look at, what was it, 500 games movies? Because it's four books and five movies. Yeah, there were two, right? Mockingbird. Yes. She makes four X-Men movies. The first three work commercially to some degree. And then the first two David O. Russell movies, like, soar past $100 million, you know, $300 worldwide, whatever. That block was so fucking strong. And the fact that she's winning an Oscar, getting nominations in between, seen as supporting two franchises, the X-Men movies start to warp themselves around. Right, we all remember that Mystique is the leader. Everyone, yes, the best known and most famous X-Men. Of course, the whole time. Like, there's the insane thing when you watch Days of Future Past where they're like, this movie needs to have her as ostensibly the lead character, but also her scheduling is impossible because she's doing Hunger Games. So she needs to have the primary plot thread where she's also on her own, and we can shoot her separate from everyone else. But also they're like, we've got this incredibly famous actor, and also this character is blue all the time. Like, we need to figure out ways that she's not in, like, full-body makeup. Barely ever. Right. The fact that the first one is, like, you need to be blue because that's like your true self. Right. And then in the other one, she's like, yeah, but I'm not going to do that much. Right, right, right, right. I'm also going to like be 70s. I feel like the response at the time was like, yeah, smart. Build your movie around Jennifer Lawrence. People weren't like, oh, they're shoving her down our throats. And so then there's the thing of like passengers like squeaks to 98 million or whatever. Yeah. It was a flop. It was a flop. It was sort of like, right, like less embarrassing than it could have been because it's sort of made. But I mean, it probably made international money. I think so, too. But we're just doing a Jennifer Lawrence thing. I think it's important. You get to a point there where they're like, OK, but if her in a turkey still gets to 90 something. And obviously that movie costs too much. Then making Red Sparrow for 40 or 60 or making Mother for like 40 or 50 still makes sense. And I think there was this belief of like, is she just the one person that her audience will auto buy a ticket? They will follow her anywhere. And even if mother isn't going to make a hundred million dollars, maybe it makes 50. And instead, it's just like, no, she's making things that are like unpleasant to watch. You know, often by design, it feels like that was the phase she was going through and testing it. She's made one pleasant to watch movie. and like before that you know the movies she made were Hunger Games David O'Russell movies and X-Men movies none of which are light and you know fluffy no I mean X-Men and Hunger Games are both she's made one fun movie in her entire career obviously X-Men movies are fun like Hunger Games movies I mean they are fun I suppose but like they're pretty dark like I really think that's the I mean, Don't Look Up is a comedy, but a comedy that bugs you out. Also, just like really not fun. She's like the angry character in the movie, too. She's playing the least fun of anybody. I think that's why there was so much hope around No Hard Feelings. It's like, wait, you're telling me it's Jennifer Lawrence press interview the movie? That part of her power was this like, oh, my God, she's this powerhouse dramatic actress. She can do action and she can like do the dialogue. And then we see her in interviews and she's funnier than comedians, you know, and people, I think, liked the contrast between the two. But then the hope was if you let her be funny in a movie, is that just going to explode the box office? But we hate comedy now. We just don't. That's the problem. Yeah. I think if I think she's probably happy enough with her feelings. I think if she looked at anyone but you she might have the thought of like oh, huh, should I have like done a rom-com with like a really sort of established handsome actor guy rather than a silly guy. I think she would have killed it. Can you fucking imagine? That's actually like upsetting to run the simulation. But she should be having No Hard Feelings which is a better movie than anyone but you and did pretty good. I also contend, and I felt this way at the time No Hard Feelings comes out like June and then goes to Netflix very quickly. It's on the service by like September or October and immediately kind of explodes on Netflix. And I do feel like anyone but you got a bump from that. I was seeing so much social media FOMO of, oh, fuck, there was a good comedy three months ago and we didn't go. That Sony marketing, you know, both of those movies kind of capitalized upon, well, don't miss this one. I would like to see her in just a full romantic comedy. Yeah. You know, I think that'd be interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, she's kind of steered away, you know, in Causeway. She's her. That's like a platonic romance, almost like her character. Yeah. It's a sweet movie. Yeah. You know, and then No Hard Feelings is like, you know, kind of about. And once again. Yes. Lynne Ramsey's Die My Love on paper is offering. Hey, do you want to just see Robert Pattinson and Jennifer Lawrence go insane? Right. David! What? This episode... Don't act so surprised because it's a familiar friend. Oh, okay. This episode's brought to you by MUBI. Yawn! Just kidding! Comfortable! Secure! We love them! They are a global film company of champions, great cinema, iconic directors, emerging auteurs. Always something new to discover with MUBI. Each and every film hand-selected. So you can explore the best in cinema. Nothing more to say, I guess. Ngrom! There's a new film coming to theaters. Yep, movie theaters. February 13th, the first Nigerian film ever in official competition again. That's pretty wild. This is a film by Akinola Davis called My Father's Shadow. It was BAFTA-nominated, poetic, tender portrait of a father-son bond, framed within the political landscape of 1993 Legos in Nigeria. It is about a father and two young sons as they journey into and around the vibrantly rendered Nigerian metropolis, reckoning with their relationship, navigating the city that's in the middle of a democratic crisis, written by real life brothers, Akinola Davis Jr. and Wally Davis. Love it, brothers. Co-wrote this groundbreaking feature debut, and you've got Sofei Dorisu. Oh, from Slow Horses. I love him. I hope I'm saying his name right. but he's a really good actor, and he's the star. It's worth seeing. It's in theaters. It's in theaters. It's crazy to go to a theater. It's in theaters. We love that Mubi puts Mubis in theaters before ultimately ending up on their wonderful platform. Dang right. I'm just looking at some of the stuff they got right now. Die My Love, of course. Yeah. An important watch, a necessary watch for any blankie. La Grazia, the new Palo Sorrentino movie, which I missed in theaters. good moment to catch up with it. The Great Shall We Dance. Oh, the classic? The original. Oh my goodness, that's fun, like a restoration. Yeah, and look what they got a collection called Heartthrob Nicholas Cage. It's Young Dreamy Cage. Wow. Still dreaming to me? You're very open-hearted. Anyway, to dream the best of cinema, you can try Mubi free for 30 days at Mubi.com slash blank check. That's M-U-B-I dot com slash blank check. For a whole month of great cinema for free. and then go see My Father's Shadow in theaters. Please, thank you for listening. Thank you. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Thank you. Very kind. Let's talk about Dimey Love, which is a movie I like. I know you like it, Griff. Allison? I like it. Yes. I feel like it feels unmodulated to me. it does feel like it starts at a place it's so high already like and then kind of like just keeps going just like it barrels right off a cliff you know um but i do think he's incredible in it i i i it grew for me a lot on second viewing and i think i struggled a little bit on the first time liking not loving being like i guess this has to be my default bottom lin just because every other one is kind of totally knocked me out um and i think i i don't know i have a read on all of that that made it work a little more for me this time. I do want to, in this miniseries that we're now finishing on, Lynn Ramsey, called We Need to Pod About Cast Fan, introduce our producer, Ben Hosley, because I feel there is a need to get this out of the way. From the moment I saw this movie in theaters, I was like, this movie has the number one scene designed to turn Ben Hosley off I have ever seen in a film. Yeah, it's when she shoots the dog. I could not think of a thing that would auto-block Ben more than lead character of the movie shoots a dog and you have to sit with it for the second half of the film. Yeah, it happens pretty early too. Yep, like not quite through. The way I feel about that, and the same, you know, any movie that has violence against children or animals, is you're always kind of like, you really have to earn this. Like, I'm not mad like on principle, you can depict things, I understand, but I do have this kind of Just like, are you just trying to provoke me or put me in a mood? Now, granted, the dog is incredibly annoying. Yeah, that's a real asshole of a dog. Yeah. But yeah, I know as a dog owner, it is difficult for me to watch that. I do feel like the thing that Robert Pattinson's character does, which is to show up and be like, I got a dog. You're going to take care of it. It is like one of the worst things you can possibly do to a partner. It is. I mean, yes. Yes. The movie is playing with something, which is, like, it is actually designing a perfect anti-save-the-cat, right? Like, it is going against every rule. But that's what I'm saying, right? Like, are you just doing this to do that? To have, like, this spike in the movie that will kind of, like, really set me, you know, in a certain mood. I think so. I think it's less about, like... Because, like, when John Wick's dog dies, then I'm like, right, well, you should kill all those people. It's different. You're like, he needs to kill all the people now. The rule is, if you kill an animal, everyone's going to be upset, unless that is used as motivation for vengeance. And the audience feels like there's catharsis and justice, right? Save the Cat is less about stupid, imposed lines of Hollywood thinking, and more just actually an understanding of human psychology of, most people will just clock out of your movie after this point. And I think it is less that it does the shocking thing just to get a shock out of you and more does the shocking thing to say and now like what is your relationship to this character Because we not moving on from them And this is not a dream sequence And you have to, like, live with this. And to a certain degree, you're, like, held hostage by her in the same way that he is. Right? If you're in a relationship and someone shoots your dog, you're like, I think we're breaking up. Yeah. I would. I mean, I have never had a dog. But yeah, I think I would have some notes for that person. I think it's a pretty short conversation. I think it's crossing a line for me where the fact that they then go on as she continues to cross so many more lines until someone finally intervenes. Right. It's pretty wild. Yeah. I mean, I think this is the challenge of this movie is that it sits in her experience so thoroughly. Right. And to the point where you're like not sure what's real or what's not sometimes. Right. the motorcyclist neighbor who shows up for a while, you're like, is that real? Is that really a person? Before you see that he's Lakeith, he's just in a helmet, like a kind of music video figure or something. I thought it was like mental illness. Exactly. Like looming in the distance. Just to be fair, Lakeith Stanfield as a figure does kind of represent that. But the way that whole thread is handled, there's a long stretch where you're like, I cannot tell how much of this is just in her head no and even when you have the scene in the parking lot you cannot tell what you're supposed to take away from that yeah i mean should we ever fully no no no but i think with the dog or or with with with robert pattinson's character yeah name i'm forgetting does he what is his name uh his name is jackson jackson okay so with jackson and i think like the question you might have throughout of just like why is he still around and also why does he after a lot of these things happen be like let's get married um you know is that i feel like we just never we're so deep in her perspective that we don't actually get a sense of what she might be like from the outside you know like like like yeah this is interesting i mean a i think yeah you know what i was saying about like uh uh dog killing being a bit of a deal breaker in relationships It's like this person has a child with this woman. So there is like a sense of. You can't just be like, Jesus, you're too much enough. Yeah, right. Right. For a guy who is a character who certainly is not good at expressing himself or working through things or feels like he's really good at engaging with the severity of things. There is like a struggle to calculate like, well, even if I perceive this woman to be like a physical threat to my child, what do I do? Is, you know, having her institutionalize the move? Is moving away from her the move? Like, all of these things have, like, eternal ripple effects on the health of this child. Whether you remove her from the equation or keep her close, there's, like, pluses and minuses. And you're like, but now he has, like, witnessed her do a thing that he's never going to be able to get past, right? It is an act that, much like the way it stays with the audience, you're just like, he can't process that. he's never going to be like well that was a bad day right like there is like a core trauma there he's never going to be able to move past and i think in terms of like where is this line why are they allowing it to happen why does he then decide to get married to her there's a thing that i found very informative with this movie which is like it's based on a book the book is very much about like how much is in this person's head psychosis in a postpartum depressive state it's also not set in Montana. No, in France. Right, but it's the idea of being isolated and losing a grip on reality. That character's not a writer. And yeah, there were a lot of changes made. We'll open the dossier in a moment and get into all of this. And it is offered to Lynn Ramsey, and she goes like, I feel like I did my version of a postpartum movie with Kevin. Sure. Do I want to repeat this? Although she did that before she had children. Well, that's A. And B, I think she's like, okay, is there a different in for me on this story. And she keeps saying in interviews, I didn't see this as a postpartum movie. I saw this as an opportunity to make a mad love story. And when I read that, I was like, what is that? And what I think she's saying is literally that is a movie about falling in love with someone who is severely mentally ill. It is a movie about getting in too deep in a relationship with someone where, you know, in your 20s, a lot of things, people you know, who are really engaging and charismatic and have like exciting personalities start to experience significant breakdowns in their late 20s and 30s. And you realize these are traits of latent mental illness and the exact things that make someone like Jennifer Lawrence seem like this is the most exciting girl in the world. You keep wanting to excuse things. And the further the signs present themselves, the more there's a sunk cost fallacy of to accept this at this moment is to look back on everything and invalidate it. And this guy is just trying so hard to be like, what will reset her back to three years ago? You know, there's clearly a thing. And I think this movie's failing is it doesn't totally dramatize his character correctly. I think this movie would connect more if it could find a way to explain his point of view a little more. But I think it's just how can I deny that I was wrong about this person or the sense that this person is gone? And what can I do to try to get them back? I think that's a great point. So I think that... Especially now that there's a baby in the mirror. Sure. So I think the idea of being like this, like telling that story but telling it from her perspective is like what is so disorienting about this movie because it is like to be like this is a movie about loving someone who is like having who is spiraling out in a way that they're probably not going to recover from but also you're going to see it from the point of view of the person spiraling out but also i think his character and i understand why because if he were too too sympathetic or too responsible you would just totally lose her right like you can't just be like why doesn't he dump her but like they talked about in the book he's way more of an oaf yeah they were like we wanted to make him more emotionally engaged you know yeah even if he's not a hundred percent able to yeah at the same time though he like he does yeah like he comes he's like i got a dog and then it's like and then and then he's like clearly yeah like and then also you remember there's that scene where he's like we need to talk, leave the baby behind. Yes, insane. And wrestles her into the car and drives her off. Like that, you know, like for all that you're like, there is a lot, there are legitimate reasons why some of these characters would worry about the baby. Though like she is also like always very careful with the baby, you know, even when she is like walking off into the woods. She never, there's never a question like within our perspective that she is, she is like not caring. There's the knife in the beginning. Right. But like that's like a breeze, right? I don't know. She gets quite close. I feel like she has never... With a knife to the baby. She was a movie. Also, like, there's that point where she's like, the one thing that works is, like, the baby, right? Like, she even says as much at a certain point. I sort of eventually realized, right, the baby was not really going to be... In danger for her. ...in problem, in danger, yes. Yeah. But I guess she was a danger to herself. She's more a danger to herself. Nonetheless. Yes. You know. Yeah. But, yeah, like, I mean, it is interesting that, like, it puts in these scenes where Pattinson is the one who is like Jackson is the one who is careless about child care. This is a problem I had with Night Bitch, a worse movie that nobody remembers. I know how there's Night Bitch. But a movie I was thinking about a lot during this rewatch because there is so much overlap between the two of them and sort of the bigger ideas. Exactly. Did you see Night Bitch? I never saw Night Bitch. Night Bitch coming. That's a bit from two years ago. It has the same sort of plot of like, we're with this mother who is struggling. Obviously, my bitch is very much a postpartum movie that's about her struggling with like how her body has changed and blah, blah, blah. But the husband's there and seems like not like a complete dolt, but also like kind of careless and like not very emotionally. It's like Mary has a bit of a well-intentioned back. Where he's like, I want to play Xbox. And I was just kind of like, I think he has to be stupider or smarter. Like, I just think, like, the guy you're showing me, I think, would be a little more on, like, that his wife is turning into a dog. Like, he needs to be dumber, like, or something. I agree that it is the fundamental Achilles heel of this movie, Die My Love, is that exact problem. Where the two times I've seen it, I'm like, Pattinson either needs to be significantly smarter or significantly dumber. and I have seen him play both incredibly well many times. I know he has that range. The problem is that he's so interesting and so hot. He is. That he needs to make a stronger choice. Yeah, yeah. Right. The problem is that if he's too dumb, then it's about being married to a dumbass. Right. And that's not what it's supposed to be about. Right, and then it just like, and then I think it becomes something that the movie... And if he's too smart, then you're like, why the fuck isn't he just like, you know... Yeah, well, the movie doesn't want to. it kind of takes a lot of pains to reject the idea of being like oh it's so awful like i'm trapped in this marriage to this like just to this right like yes he is highly imperfect but you have sympathy for him right it's also not a story about like moving to montana making you crazy but she they have moved to montana and she is going crazy yeah and or about feeling like you can't express yourself creatively i mean we never really learn about her writing at all like the writing is almost this asterisk of being like it symbolizes something she can't do anymore, potentially related to her mental health. But Sierra writes once in a very abstract way. Spreading some ink. Oh, right. As well as some fluid milk. Yeah. It's new. It's different. It's fresh. It's on the paper. It's very fresh. I'm sorry. No, I agree that the thing holding this movie back from like greatness for me and the thing that puts it at the bottom of the pile for me is you know i think the patenting character is kind of operating from a belief that this is a postpartum thing i understand that i don't understand this maybe i just didn't know it was going to be this extreme uh and this will end we will get to the other side of it right and And I think a lot of this movie is about the rejection of there is something larger here. Postpartum has possibly broken a dam of many, many issues. And, you know, all the women around her are sort of like going like, yeah, I had like a night bitch phase, too. Anyway, now I know how to wear clothes. You know, look, I used to scream and throw knives. Anyway, now it's six months later and I'm a little bit OK. And you just got to like shove it down. and everyone is sort of saying this kind of like Stepford YV like, yeah, you just suck it up and no men want to hear your problems and you get through it. I think they're also kinder about it, right? Yeah, they're not being assholes about it. It's like, can I help you? Can I please do anything? We have to stick together because they don't understand what's going on with us. But also in saying that to her, they don't understand what's going on with her. And I think to her, that being communicated also feels like you're telling me there's more of this. you know like this is not reassuring can we crack open the dossier so you never really hear came out eight years prior you know once again she has a long gap between projects there's pandemic and such there are many projects that come close well I'll tell you something One is a Civil War movie called Call Black Horse starring Casey Affleck. Okay. Nothing else has ever surfaced about that one. Zero ways that could go wrong. She says she wrote 160 pages of a script that is an epic environmental horror thing. Nothing's ever really come of that one either. She signed on with Village Roadshow at one point to direct The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, which is a Stephen King novel like a not not Stephen with a PH not Stephen with a PH? no it is Stephen with a PH so JJ actually fucked up wrote his name wrong JJ walking to the burning woods yeah she apparently once George A. Romero had been sort of tasked with making that she wrote a screenplay for that it's about a hike on the Appalachian Trail a girl listening to the radio she gets lost in the woods sounds sort of interesting nothing has ever come up the two big ones are a film called Polaris which has long been in development long attached to Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara about an ice photographer that's set at the turn of the century she says it's a passion project we don't know that is the one because I have sort of wanted to do her as soon as she made a new film most years until this year, there was a, maybe Polaris is filming in a couple months? There was an erroneous account in Variety that it had wrapped production. That was the thing that really fucked us up. Because then people were like, are there two Lynn Ramsey movies in the can? That is simply just not true. No, it's simply not true. But it always kind of felt like that was closest to happening and then this movie leapfrogged. The other thing was Stone Mattress, an adaptation of a short story from a Margaret Atwood collection. There was also erroneous reporting because she had been attached to Stone Mattress. I was going to have Julianne Moore and Sandra O and be set on a ship. Right. Yes. I feel like there was also a point where it came out in some interview Oh Jennifer Lawrence and Lynn Brams you're working something and then people erroneously spread that it was Jennifer Lawrence has signed on to Stone Mattress. Sure. Yeah. They would have had to shoot it in Greenland. Okay. Yeah. And they struggled to, I mean, it's hard to, you know, set a movie like that up. She also floated working on a TV show, a TV series that never happened. Anyway, as we know with Die My Love, what happens is Martin Scorsese, who has a book club, which has unnamed film directors who read books with their eyes towards adapting them. I don't know who's in this club. No. I'm guessing it's probably him and a couple X-Men directors. He read... What does the term mean now? Griffin's made it very flexible. He read Die My Love, written by Ariana Harwich, I think, Argentinian writer, found it to be a powerful mosaic of the mind, and handed it to Jennifer Lawrence. He had liked Mother, and he basically said, like, I think she can pull this off. Apparently, you know, he had come to her once before. our friend Gia, who's on this podcast in the profile said that apparently Kate Sherpan's novel The Awakening had been something that Scorsese brought to Lawrence, but nothing happened. He's had his eye out for her. She's wanted to work with him. They're in communication. He will send her books that he thinks there's something in that could fit with her. Lawrence decides that she's always wanted to work with Rillian Ramsey, said I've wanted to work with her my entire adult life, and sent her the novel directly. and they email for about six months about being moms and other things. Ramsey's a little, as you say, wary because she's kind of like, I already did, we need to talk about Kevin. But, you know, a major movie star is trying to work with her and is handing her something. Ramsey also was like, hey, I don't want to make that, I'd rather make this. And Lawrence was like, this is the movie I want to make. Lawrence was persistent, and so Ramsey had to be somewhat won over, but she kind of fucked with the story, turned into more of a love story. May I read this quote I found that I thought was interesting that Jennifer Lawrence gave to IndieWire. She said, you know, Scorsese Hansel, the book says you should do this. And Lawrence's quote is, I sat with it for a while and then once it all clicked that it isn't a literal adaptation, that it's more poetic. Then I realized Lynn Ramsey was the only person that we could conceive of making it because she's the only poet I know of that makes movies. There you go. and so part of wanting her to make it was being like i want you to interpret this how you want i think when lynn is like i don't know is this too similar this book she's just like you figure out your version of it that's what i want to do but it feels like there's a lot of empowering of i want to be in whatever version of this you want to make so ramsey says i want to put humor in there uh i want it to be a love story she says something that i think is a little silly which is the whole postpartum thing is just bullshit. It's not about that. It's about a relationship breaking down. It's about love breaking down and sex breaking down after having a baby. After having a baby is what postpartum. So it is a postpartum movie, but okay, Lynn Ramsey. I think she just is probably reacting to how much that was reduced to the log line of the movie. I think Jennifer Lawrence is very much like, this is my Jim Rollins movie. This is me being cast about DC. you know yeah um and an interesting thing she has two children she talks about she talked a lot in the press for this movie that she did not have a difficult postpartum experience mentally and emotionally after her first time yeah the tough one after a second when she films this movie she is like less than three months pregnant which is how they're able to do things like the breast like lactation like practically and you know by being in her early stages of pregnancy she's physically more believable as someone who's like recently given birth she's making this movie being like this is pure just acting for me this is like fucking jenna roland's this is going off this is exploration i'm not pulling for anything in my own experience then she wraps this film she has a second child she has a really tough postpartum experience there lynn ramsey edits for a while she goes to see the movie at can and she like breaks down crying and she's like i was representing a thing I hadn't experienced that I'm now watching and is speaking to me. It's just kind of a fascinating I don't know, catching her at that moment. It is interesting. It's interesting that she made this while she was pregnant. I think it was a pain in the ass. Probably. Lynn decides to move the action to Montana. I mean, she wasn't going to make it in France, right? I guess that makes sense. And she never really met the author until after the movie was a can. So she didn't really delve with the author on what it's about. And she gets the Disco Pigs guy to adapt it? Two people. Edna Walsh, who's a playwright. He's the guy who wrote Small Things Like These. Is he the Disco Pigs guy? I think so. Am I wrong about that? I don't know. Let me look it up. Yeah, he's the guy who wrote the play Disco Pigs back in the day. Which was Cillian Murphy's launchpad. Yeah, as both play and movie. And then Alice Birch, who wrote Lady Macbeth and then worked on Successions stuff like basically was brought in as a script editor like as they're in final weeks of prep and Lynn was like you did the work you should have a credit too so there's why there's three credits Pattinson said the first draft was funnier maybe and then like and the husband was sort of just a device in the book like he's just useless and my character was kind of like that in the first draft but then like it's sort of beefed up with every draft sure I mean, it did. I mean, he's got stuff to do. They got like 30 to 40 percent of the way there to a character is what I find frustrating. Yep. Yeah. I mean, he's just we see him through her eyes so clearly. It's so clearly a subjective experience of him that it's hard to. Yeah. There's a lot of stuff I can infer, but it's still hard to kind of make sense of what he's doing on a scene to scene basis. I can kind of like zoom out and go anyway. Go on. I mean, like the cheating, right? Like, you're like, how much of this is her channeling her own frustrations and her own feelings of like her like sexual frustration, her feelings about her body and how much of it is like, yes, there are condoms in there. And I'm like, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I feel like Ramsey makes a real choice to establish a pattern of him looking at women and looking at women who you have to imagine are similar to Jennifer Lawrence when he met her. You know, there's sort of the alternative girl who is the waitress at the diner and the two girls on the beach and sort of like, you know, who has this kind of like rough energy in their mid 20s that maybe he's now on the business end of and is longing for again. But right. You don't really get any larger allusions to, you know, he's he's texting someone under the table or whatever. no and he's also hot you would feel jealous and crazy because he's a good looking guy like you're just kind of like well I'm sure people are interested in you you know you know Lauren says Lynn is very emotionally led not controlling crazy you know they do these sort of rehearsals where you're kind of just like exploring the space and being weird and right like a lot of stuff comes out of that yeah and you know Pattinson, like, who I think is fairly studious as an actor in trying to prepare for it. Pattinson, I've been told, right, is, like, a very serious rehearser who struggles with, I mean, it was Eggers who told me long ago, this is the lighthouse, with Willem Dafoe being more like, let's go crazy in this scene. Right. And Pattinson was like, oh, fuck, I, like, but I, like, really got the voice down and, like, you know, I've been, like, working on this scene really hard. Yeah. But then I assume, he's done a lot of work since then, where I assume, again, he had to kind of adjust. Lighthouse is an interesting comparison point because you're like, that's kind of, in theory, what should be the juice of casting him here, is placing him into an unstructured environment with an actor who is so famously instinctive, you know, instead of intellectual, and then having him struggle with an environment that he can't figure out the framework of. And I feel like Lighthouse gets that. Like, he channels his frustration into the character. He's great in it. Which is the primary thing he needs to do. And he has the more tough role. Exactly. Yeah. Right. And they don't quite land on it here, but he tells the story about there being like a five-page dialogue scene that he worked really hard on. That he's like a real, like, fucking, like, notes in the margin of the page kind of guy. And they got to set, and Lynn's like, I think we do this without words. And he was like, which part? And she was like, all five pages. And he was like, I guess this is just what this is. Yeah, I guess this is the process here. I would be annoyed. we've been hurt. Different people work different ways. Pattinson had never really met Jennifer Lawrence before. I've always wanted to work with her. They were chatting about something and she was like, do you want to be my husband in this Lynn Ramsey movie? This is how he puts it. Pattinson is notoriously someone who kind of like massages the truth on press. Unreliable narrator. Didn't like a clown shoot his dad or something? No, that's the cooking things. where he invents weird cooking things yeah but he claims that Jennifer kind of offered it to him somewhat casually because he was kind of like why are there no cool jobs and she's like how about this makes sort of sense because it's like this is not the kind of movie you package with two stars it is a Jennifer Lawrence movie and he is certainly playing a supporting role but he seems to have a good time he's a very game actor I love him in so many things I like him in this. I walked out with very little to say about Robert Pattinson. Yeah, I mean, he's good at playing kind of like slightly unreliable or disappointing, like that aura. I think he's good at conjuring. But yeah, it is like it is like you said, it is like 40 percent of a character. Here's what I think they're trying to get at with this character. Right. I was like watching it a second time, the opening of the house. Right. And then walking into it. And the first thing he says is like, I could record music in here. and you're like, okay, so, and he's talking about his childhood memories of the things that happened. They are inheriting his uncle's house. They are moving back to his hometown closer to his parents. His father played by I don't know this actor. I didn't I've never seen this guy before. He's kind of got just like a generic everyman vibe, voice temperament. They just found a guy. He's like a Kevin O'Leary. Nick Nolte on fucking fire in a tiny role, but I think he is, like, devastating in this movie. It is such an impactful, like, two minutes or whatever it is. A couple scenes? Yeah. Is it just one or... No, it's a couple scenes. Two. It's the scene in the woods as well. The scene in the house that's extended and the scene in the woods. How much Nolte is there been late? Not much. Yeah, what's the last... I mean, he was in two... He was in a thing called The Golden Voice, which... I can't say I know much about. Three... And then it's three years ago, he was in the Josh Duhamel movie Blackout. Of course. And it's two years before that. I mean, like, yeah, he's barely done anything. Yeah. Like. He is now, uh, do-do-do-do-do, 85 years old? That's old? Yeah. I mean, he's been around a long time. Yeah. But, I mean, like, I was trying to think of what's the last. Poker Face. Poker Face is the thing. Oh, yeah. I knew there was something in the last couple years I thought he was great in. Yeah, that was TV that I loved he was great in. He got his spotlight episode of Poker Face. Of course, we all enjoyed him in The Mandalorian, but I think that was just the voice. What are you talking about? I'm in the costume. I'm pulling a dwarf. I'm on my knees playing an agnott. I love the Poker Face episode. He plays Full Tippet, basically. Have you watched that episode? No, I don't think so. I've watched a lot of Poker Face. He plays a stop-motion animator whose career is over. That it's a very obvious homage to Phil Tippett. Consciously, and I think Brian Johnson's friends with Phil Tippett. But Phil Tippett talks about, like, his own mental health journey and the kind of breakdown he had when CGI replaced stop motion. And it's very much an old team playing the recovered version of that guy. But he's also a murder victim. Like, he's not in it. Too much. He's heartbreaking. He's great. Yeah, it's a really great performance. But, like, yeah, what's, like, the last? A Walk in the Woods is I feel like the last time he was on the poster in a real movie that came out in theater. I believe he is the and in Angel Has Fallen. He is in Angel Has Fallen. Or he's revealed to be Gerard Butler's dad which totally makes sense. You're right. Yes, of course you are. This is so crazy. He plays someone who lives in the woods. Oh, weird. They're like, where did you come from, Angel? He's like, well, it's a long story. And then it cuts to Nick Nolte being like, I make wood guns. Haven't seen that. That's the third one. I'm a secret service agent for the trade. That's the third one. Right, because the first one, it's the president is taken. The second one is the prime minister is taken. And the third one is he is taken. I think. I don't know. I believe you. Nick Nolte, Ramsey said, I just thought of him for the role and I asked to meet he asked to meet me in person. I went to Malibu and she says, look, his face is mismeric and you can't take your eyes off him. So it's like, I don't know. It's not like she had to go hunting for him. I guess he just doesn't work much, but he makes sense here. Sissy Spacek is great, obviously. She's just a great actor. Lawrence, she's in Causeway, so Lawrence had worked with her. I also confess I also forgot about that. and then like he's Sanfield yeah barely in a role it strikes me as the kind of thing where he's just kind of he's the kind of savvy arty actor who probably is like I'll definitely work with Linda Ramsey and she says in the interview I'd love to do like something bigger with him I wondered like if that if there were more there that just got chopped down to like this kind of weird vestigial storyline it's not Terrence Malick levels but I do feel like she's a filmmaker where you sign up for the movie and you're like, there's a version where you're in the whole thing, or maybe you have no dialogue. It does feel like, even though it's a little distracting because he's famous enough that you keep expecting him to do more, the movie is asking him to do a thing that is so tied to his innate energy and presence that it does feel like it is effective shorthand casting in a way, but you are also like did they really just get like he's sanfield to show up and like kiss her twice in the woods i think they may and then give that horrified look when he had that encounter in the parking lot where he's like oh no right the idea with the pattinson character right that this is where he grew up his father is in a pretty extreme state of late stage dementia it seems and his mother is a very fragile woman it feels innately forever and his uncle has died and there you can infer that there was some sort of, well, there's this house, we could move there, we could live for free, the cost of living is so much lower. Maybe if we want to have kids, isn't that a better place to raise kids? Well, I feel like it's, right, also, it's implied she's pregnant already, right? Like, I mean, in that first, like, kind of, like, montage where they're kind of dancing and cleaning, it cuts to her being pregnant almost immediately. So I presume that part of the impetus was, like, if we're going to have kids, let's go, we can have a whole house. Yeah, right. It feels like even if she doesn't know she's pregnant when they enter the house, it is a thing that they are trying to make happen. But yes, when he talks about, like, I could record music here, it's like there's a sense of they must have met in some cooler college town. They both left wherever they grew up and were like hip, young, artistically activated kids together who stayed together. And now they're at this inflection point where he's presenting to her. well my dad's sick this house is free we want to have kids isn't that a better place to raise kids and when he gets back there he kind of resets back to who he was growing up that's her fear that he's kind of right like shedding his that's where i think there's almost a character that it's like this guy is surrendering his cool energy you kind of have to read it in but yes to what degree did he just always kind of want to drive a truck when that was like a dalliance to be like i make music and shit he puts down the ipa and he picks up the budweiser exactly exactly yeah and you know this is what's comfortable to him he's so like activated the most excited i would argue he is the entire movie is in the opening pointing out to her in the house that's where i chip my tooth like he's like i've returned to my core self and can i get over this like performative social jockeying especially if we're together because i know this is the person i want to be with and to her it's like well i don't know like if writing is my core identity but certainly if someone like this is a writer people go like you know she's like a writer she's all crazy she does crazy stuff but if she stops writing then they're like what's your deal he wants to keep saying i'm gonna do music but he seems to have no ambition to express himself creatively in any way he just he likes guitars right he's so offended when she's like i hate guitars right right it's like That's a great thing to say to someone out of the blue. It's a bunny. Yes. Exactly. Who hates guitars? How do they represent something to her? Yeah. Yes. Yeah. You understand what she's feeling at that point. And she also just wants to make him mad. And she's coming out with that. But I think also, you know, you get that flashback early on of her. I think it's like the Nolte scene where I think it's like Thanksgiving dinner maybe. And it's like all of the women are at the table and all of the men are in the other room. and you're like you can sense her being like oh is this my future like this kind of like we're in the kitchen and we're at the table and we're talking about women's stuff and like this like really traditional gender split and these kind of like gender roles uh like you can watch him becoming more i mean there's a point where the point where i mean she's obviously acting out at the pool party but like he has like a panic attack over that right like that kind of like he is already settling into this more kind of like socially conservative pattern that he grew up in And it doesn't feel like that's the first time he's had that reaction. It feels like he constantly lives in fear of, you know, the thing with her is sometimes she has her moods, you know? Right, right. And, like, suddenly she has gone from being, like, they're both, like, arty, kind of, like, wild and crazy kids to being, like, she is the crazy one. Right. And here is kind of, like, you know, her coming out party to the neighborhood in a kind of way. It's, like, we fixed her. We're a happy family. and now like meet the other housewives and i think you're right that like even the scene with sissy space like where she goes to visit her and sissy space like holds her up a shotgun out of fear that someone's breaking into her house is kind of like sissy being like welcome to the club you're on the other side here's how we swallow pain and that is just fucking terrifying to her the idea that there is now an expectation of normalcy or at least keeping up appearances that it feels like what Ceci Spasica is saying to her is, yeah, we all feel insane. We're all miserable. All of this is difficult. Here's how you handle it. And that is not a thing she's interested in doing at all. And I think it's so telling the moment when Nick Nolte is struggling to tie his shoes and she goes over to him. I think it's maybe the single best moment in the film. And it's key to my reading of what does work in this film is you're like, this guy's off in the corner. struggling so deeply with such a simple task and it is that like sadness of the elderly feeling the frustration of their loss of ability to handle a thing like that and not knowing what the right way to relate to them is in that moment to not be condescending to be helpful while also not feeling like you are robbing them of any power or ability and she just starts like communicating with him through like faces like expressive sort of like you know like fucking like comedia del arte version of emotions uh right like hold up that like are you happy are you sad like medical chart yes yeah and you just see him find a moment of comfort with her where it's like fuck we speak the same language there are very different things going on in their respective brains but there is a similar I can't engage with what's happening over there at that table. And what's happening between us is not verbal. And he has this moment of peace and focus and he helps her or she helps him. And then like, you know, 30 seconds later, he freaks out not knowing where he is and who's alive and who's dead and why they're in his brother's house and what year it is. People say he's been alive. You know what? This year, right? Yeah, that was it. My favorite scene is the one he's driving her back I think from a hospital maybe or like this is after a little while. She's like thrown herself through the woods. She does throw herself through the window. Her relationship to the woods is very similar to Forky's relationship to trash. I gotta get back in. At all costs, be I nude, be it on fire, I must be in the woods. She's thrown herself through the window. He's taken her to the emergency room. They're back. She's like, her face is like covered in scabs still. And she's like, when's the last time we had sex? Do you know? Yes. And kind of demands that he say that he desires her and then starts being like, are we going to have sex tonight? Are we going to have sex when we get home? What if we have sex in the car? Like, right. And it's just, it's so, I think there is this way in which she kind of like revels. She's still obviously Jennifer Lawrence and like one of the most beautiful people on the planet, but like revels in like these moments of kind of like grotesquerie almost in the same way she's like a little rabid squirrel exactly yeah and it's like it's really funny and he's so uncomfortable and he's so trying to be like no i'm into it like i love this like yes like let's let's have sex in the car with my mom in the house right there watching our baby like it's so it's so good i think like that like those scenes are where i really enjoy that performance right the thing i liked there's lots of things like like i do buy that she's like, why won't you fuck me? And he's like, no, no, I will, I will. But he probably doesn't want to. Partly because she'd do be throwing herself through windows all the time, I suppose. But partly because of normal postpartum kind of thing. And he's clearly very stressed. And even though he's looking at other women. That'll turn your house into a Polanski movie eventually. Everyone will be crawling up the walls. He's looking at other women, but it doesn't feel like this movie is doing a thing that I think a worse film would, which is sort of implying that it's like, well, now that she's had a baby, she's not quite the same anymore, and I just, I'm not really attracted to her anymore. It is like, everything else going on with her is overriding his animalistic instincts towards her, which seen by the naked dancing at the beginning of the movie, clearly used to be their language. Or that's how she feels about their old relationship. Even if you want to just be in her mind's eye, it's like, yes, we used to have this. Right, and when she's like, why won't you fuck me? You used to fuck me in the car. She gets really, like, graphic in the description of, like, the process of physical maneuvering to have sex in the car. And he's just like, I don't know what. First of all, if you're intellectualizing it in this way, we're past the point of spontaneity, which is what you really want. And also, our life has too many responsibilities to be that spontaneous in that way. It's what he, like, does not say to her. but it is why he's like i know i do i think i do want to fuck you but not right now isn't it the mom's right there too so yeah yeah and in my memory also that scene is pretty shortly after the dog yeah i mean i think it's like she throws herself through the window uh and then like i think there's like a few more scenes after that and then yeah this is right so So there's like a feeling of when they have these confrontations, it being like the to do list of things we need to talk through is now like six items long. We still haven't really wrestled with the dog. You know, to some degree, the scene where he's like driving her. I think he's driving her after she's killed the dog and he's just looking at her like, do I know this person? but he's also trying to like combat his fear and disdain with like should i be worried about her like what does this say about what's going on and what do i need to do to get through to her um that is the sort of like mad love story part of it of i i cannot fully divorce my emotions from this poor person who i now can't really understand yeah she's transformed in some way she is again I keep thinking of no hard feelings and mother I guess I'm trying to think of like her most feral other performances and there's like roots of it in the David O. Russell movies where she's you know quote unquote she's sort of being crazy in like this 70s throwback way that feels fake and stupid to me I mean you know what like the movie this one made me think about is melancholia you know like very much The wedding scene also is very much like it starts off and it feels like it encompasses a whole year's worth of drama and also just falls apart so spectacularly. But also like the depiction of depression, you know? Well, I think melancholia is a very powerful depiction of depression, right? And like I am kind of here and there on Lars von Trier. and that's a movie that I saw at the time and liked a lot but wasn't even like some people were like best movie of the decade yeah I love that movie yeah but then it let quickly kind of like stuck with me yeah where I was like I think I might have also just been feeling really bad after I saw that movie because it's about feeling bad and it worked like it did a good job conveying the feeling of feeling bad yeah whereas this doesn't to me. This more rattles me, this movie, and that's fun. It gets a rise out of me in that way, but it didn't really, I didn't feel in her head maybe in the same kind of profound way. That's a Lynn Ramsey thing. And you were saying this movie is so much from her perspective. I think this is weirdly the least protagonist perspective centered film in her oeuvre. Which her work is so intimate inside the head that that still makes it feel more sort of singular through this one character's eyes than most movies. But I think it is a little zoomed out. She's not doing, you know, the main device of the book is how much of this is real, more repulsion style, where is the line kind of stuff. Sure, right, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think part of that is that, and partially some of this is the framing and probably why, like, Ramsey is pushing back on the postpartum thing. Not to say that isn't part of the suit, but just, like, to frame it that way, makes a depression movie, and does this movie work as a depression movie, versus I feel like when we get to the scene where she is committed to the hospital, and she's in the sort of, like, group therapy environment, and for the first time we get, like, backstory from her. And it is, in a worse film, in a worse piece of material, the scene where it's like oh and now she breaks down crying and here's the court she's smoking a cigarette and she tells you right that her mommy never loved her or whatever right and then it's solved and then she can move forward right and instead she like kind of very bluntly offhandedly explains to this therapist i said group therapist but it's a one-on-one scene right uh i can't remember now yeah um she said to this guy like yeah my parents and here was the dynamic and my parents were unhealthy and it was a you know an emotionally unstable household and both of them died in a plane crash and she's sort of presenting as like but that like doesn't have anything to do with me and there's a sense of like there is something that has been unacknowledged in horror family for a while uh you know there is something that has just been treated with a kind of like white knuckle get through it to attitude perhaps uh and that then can be manifested and like owned as being a spark plug and being like wild and being creative and all these sorts of things i think also i mean i think there are multiple possible elements right like her her childhood and you know her attachment issues and postpartum and other depression you know but like she rejects all of them right Like she did not let on to any of them Yes And I feel like part of like I think the power of this movie comes for me from her just being like it doesn't actually matter which of these things it is because I cannot get a hold of it. And I think like a lot of the great parts of her performance are the ones where she's just conveying someone who is like, like almost just like impossibly restless and unhappy in her own skin. You know, like, when she does, she does the thing where she, like, kind of, like, drops over from the waist, like, her, like, you know, her strings have been cut, like, she's, you know, a puppet whose strings have been cut. And then, or she makes those weird faces when she's in the car, like, you know, she looks at her own body. The lower jaw thing. Yeah, the lower jaw thing. She looks at her body in the mirror in ways that are almost, like, clinical, you know, like, I think there is this really, I think she does a lot to convey this idea of someone where you're just like, what if you can barely stand to inhabit, not even in disgust, but just, like, you are, you barely can stand to inhabit. but your own body. Right, and everyone is constantly trying to point to things that are circumstantial. Well, it's tough moving. This is a big culture shock for you. And you're like, those are things possibly all contributed, but they are not helpful for her as, like, solutions. There's a talking around the thing that feels not just about everyone around her, but also about her and her parents, and who knows how far back this goes, you know? if it is like uh kind of um acquired trauma from behavior or if it's a chemical or or what um but yes there's sort of like to a certain degree like postpartum is the red herring of this movie and i feel like the woods thing is her just naturally being drawn to the idea of going back to some natural state right it is literally like can i be a naked animal in the woods can i be night bitch i just want to fucking stop pretending i want to stop being told there is a way to behave i want to like get on all fours and eat leaves like what is all of this you know like the idea of the pool party is just like it just feels like fucking theater to her that she cannot maintain for more than two minutes and it is so heartbreaking to me because you have this arc of her going in there you see her settled in the hospital, you know? Her temperament has certainly calmed down. Even though she doesn't seem happy, you were like, there is a mania that has lowered. And now it's like, has she... The first time watching this, I was like, is this movie a kind of tragedy of some part of her getting doled off in order to survive? And instead, she just rejects it within three minutes. She has to, like, tell this woman off to her face and rip her clothes off. And what makes sense to her is to, like, look at the young cashier at the gas station and be like, why the fuck are we talking? Which is another one of the best scenes of the movie. Unfortunately, I relate to that scene. You hate small talk? Yes, I do. And I, over the pandemic, briefly spent some time in New Hampshire, rural New Hampshire. and having grown up in New Jersey you know tri-state area I lived in New York I'm so used to social interactions being brief and curt and maybe some people would interpret it as rude I actually really prefer the quick just you don't even need to make eye contact with me it's yes and so being the Northeast thing. Yeah, whatever. Being out in this rural setting and someone just being like, how about the weather, huh? Like, chit-chatting with me. I definitely had these moments where I was so tempted to be like, enough. Just give me the thing, man. Just ring me up. Like, I really get it. Well, look, it's a thing that Melancholia gets as well, which is like, that movie is all based on this, the idea of Melancholia, the idea of this planet crashing in possibly pretending an apocalypse being a metaphor, but also being real, which is the power of that movie, which is just like when you are at a deep, deep stage of depression or mania or any other number of things, you are catastrophizing everything, but also it, you might be right. You know, there is, there is a degree of like broken clock four times a day kind of thing. Like maybe, this clock has like multiple correct overlap moments and she's just kind of like seeing things clearly at times you know there is and that also then makes you want to I think as a person in like a Robert Pattinson position go well she was like good yesterday you know like yesterday she was we actually had like a conversation you want to believe that there's an understanding there but then you see a situation where you're like, what is the point of you asking me questions about my baby? Nothing is accomplished by this. I cannot pretend. Doesn't she make the joke, too, of like, what's his name? And she's like, I don't know. We haven't really. We never. We decided not to name him. Yeah. Yeah. And yet she has no friends. Right. No. We learned she has no family. No one. Yeah. No one in her life at all. Yeah. She's so isolated. You get the sense that I think they were really relationship people. and now it's not like he seems to have a lot of friends on the side. He just wants to, like, go drive his truck by himself. But he also just slips back into his old life like it's like a, you know, comfortable shoe. Like, it's just... What you kind of imagine his father must have been like. Like, a kind of stoic man who was, like, sweet at times, but mostly just wants to go on, like, long rides. Right, and then comes back and is like, why is the house so dirty? Right. And that scene where he calls her from the diner, And she goes, you're eating lunch or you're eating a cheeseburger. This feeling of like, you can just go and do that. Like you're doing things without me. I'm here listening to fucking Hey Mickey 20 times in a row, which I also think it's such a good capturing of a certain kind of like mental anguish of just like, I don't know. I just need to keep fucking listening to this song. He's got the car. He's got the car. They have one car, and there's something, too, about seeing her throughout the movie pushing the baby carriage on dirt roads along a highway. It makes me nervous to see it happening. And the only place she has to go beyond the gas station store is her mother-in-law's house. There's really nowhere to go otherwise. She doesn't dislike, but she clearly cannot find a shared language with it. Yeah. Yeah. So I do love there is an expression in Sissy Spacek's face towards the very end where she does that toast to like, maybe we all die out. But like expression on her face is so wonderful because it is so like, I understand you precisely in this moment. That's why I think the Spacek casting is so good, because you can tell Spacek is a person who always feels so emotionally vulnerable that she cannot be someone who is just putting a brave face on something and not showing you any of how she actually feels. and I think Lawrence is terrified about the idea of being someone like that who isn't numb but is spending that much active energy suppressing and suppressing for outward appearances, suppressing to not make other people uncomfortable. Yeah, I mean, I think one of the best aspects of this film is that it does acknowledge all of the ways in which the women get a raw deal, right? Like from, like, yes, being stuck at home with, you know, doing what is not considered work, right? like even though like child care is obviously like requires so much from you and is difficult uh and then uh and yeah kind of being expected to just like take care of the house as like part of this like uh or um yeah the like the ways that all of the women are like yeah isn't it amazing how you just like lose the thread for like six months to a year after having a child like like like that's just part of it it's really hard like tell me that yeah like all of those things it it it or Or even like to see SpaceX's character having kind of molded her entire life around this kind of coexistence with her husband to the fact that she cannot conceive of a way to even like cook for one person. You know, like I think there are ways it acknowledges all of those things, but also is like I reject that as like the reading of this movie. Right. Like like like Lawrence's character keeps being like, but that's not the answer for me. Maybe. Yes, it is maybe accurate, but also that you cannot solve me that way. This is not just about the hardship of being a woman and being a mother. This is about me, my specifics, which are no one can quite grasp. Right. And I think it's it's part of what's amplifying everything innately in her is the biological phenomenon of, you know, being postpartum. And the other part of it is she is almost pushing past and acting out further beyond the more everyone tries to tell her. Yeah, we know what this is. Yeah. like the more people try to kind of tag her and put a box around it as an experience the more she's pushing up against it i mean i guess what we're what i'm alighting on is my problem with this movie which is I like the atmosphere of it and I like the performance a lot but I felt like I had to be doing a lot of the deeper reading into it, kind of. Which is, I mean, which maybe that's fine. Maybe that's kind of the Lynn Ramsey experience because that's sort of true with all of her movies. Right? Like with Morvern and with You're Never Really Here. I mean, there's stuff. there's little bits of context you get about these characters she doesn't like to explain in like piecemeal flatback-y kind of ways yeah and Kevin is all that but they're all a little opaque they all have that approach and so I guess I'm wondering why or last year I was wondering why a Lynn Ramsey movie that was good was kind of like more of a top 25 movie for me than a top 10 one right like you know i wait i'm like like you know like what like what was the difference here like what what sort of kept it from i i think the the highest list of movies i enjoyed in a good movie here i think it is the pattinson character i think i need to take out my final 10 but it's like does this make it in or not is a question for me and and And I think that's the thing it needs to really kind of be firing in all cylinders. Like, you don't want to tell the movie from his perspective, but you kind of need this character to be able to, his character to be able to communicate what's going on with him better. Because I think the movie is structured in a way where you're engaged enough to do the work about her. And doing the work to fill in his character feels a little annoying. and and i think it is it's also just what we're saying of like he's just a little too innately interesting as an actor that if things aren't fully fleshed out you can't buy it you can't buy blankness from him you know there needs to be like specificity he's so odd um that you can't just be like i get it they cast some boring dude the dude doesn't matter you know i mean you like talking about like night bitch like scoot mcnary is a great actor and can do super like electrifying wiry character actor work but also like casting him as the husband who doesn't quite get that his wife's turning into a dog in night bitch is casting is the same as casting him as the dad who doesn't quite understand why the crocodile is singing in la la crocodile and is that who he plays that's who he plays i haven't seen there was a shade of him that works as a kind of milquetoast like, I'm sorry, what's going on here? And that he can also do more interesting stuff. Was he mad to have not made the above-the-title billing of La La Crocodile? Do they only offer three? They only have the three. Yeah. He's on the poster. He is? Going like this. He's gesturing with his thumb at the crocodile. End it, Javier Bardem. No, his performance is real. What am I gonna do about this? So what, end the voice of Shawn Mendes? It's Javier Brennan, Constance Wu, and Shawn Mendes' Lyle. Yeah. Yeah, the kid's not getting it. Oh, is that, which Fegley is it? One of the Fegleys. It's the lower, the younger Fegley. It's a Fegley. It's a Fegley. From tip to toe, that's a Fegley. We'll get you a Fegley. That's what they said. How many Fegleys do you want? Two? You want a double Fegley or just one? Can you get the tongs and pull a Fegley out of it? Oh, fuck. We're out of Fegley. Would you be okay with a jupe? Can I give you a jupe? Oh, the jupes are kind of high value these days, though. They're stored separately. Oh, so you think maybe you get a fegly if the jupes are sold out? Yeah, I think that's the case. Yeah, I think for me, the reason this is a lower-tier Lynn Ramsey movie is just because it feels so, yeah, like, unmodulated. Like, it does feel like, you know, even that very first scene of her kind of, like, post the dance, you know, setting up the house montage when they have the baby is, like, her crawling in the grass with the knife. You know, you're already like you're starting at a place of like splintering. And I feel like it doesn't mean it goes up and down a bit, but it feels like a movie that is like operating at a kind of a scream throughout for me. And I feel like that after a while loses effectiveness. I think that's a strategic decision to try to make it clear that whatever's going on with her didn't start here. Right. That this goes far, far back. but I do the other movie I was thinking about a lot while watching this, a movie I did not like was Together oh I thought about Together as well, yeah I mean it is about moving out to that part of it, where it's like here's a hip artsy couple and one of them kind of wants to try a more rural life and the other one feels like they're suffocating, and that is a movie that is like so thuddingly literal with what is happening psychologically not just the metaphor that then turns into the heightened horror, but also like the character constantly explaining exactly what he's grieving and what he's processing. And that's a movie that does it so fucking much. And that's why I think it's a little murky with the supernatural rules to a degree where I'm like, you push me away. You're not letting me do any of the work. You keep going and you get it, right? In a way that like really turns my brain off. And this movie's doing the opposite where I'm like, you maybe need to tell me five to ten percent more directly yeah i mean there's that point where you're like am i reading into the film or am i just filling in because i need like i'm coming up with my own material here yeah and i yes yes and i the rubber meets the road with him you know and i think the scene of her with the therapist and explaining basically her parents not wanting her. I mean, this feeling that they did not know how to deal with her. They've been handed something they weren't really prepared for. Right. And it's still elusive enough where it's interesting to sort of try to parse. Was that her from birth existing in a natural state that was more that they could handle? Speaking to the extremity of the child, or is that a reflection on them and a path that she is continuing. She obviously is trying to exist in opposition to her parents because she is, despite sometimes dancing naked with a knife around a baby, I think very invested in the idea of being present in this baby's life. And yet she cannot fucking figure out how to do this. You know, I think part of her seemingly intentionally getting pregnant before they are even married and making this big commitment is she does like the idea of like, what if I could be the opposite parent? That is me filling in a lot, right? But she's also sitting there going like yeah but that's not anything and they're like and what happened to your parents died in a plane crash as if like right that's like a normal thing i have no problem with the fact that both of my parents died in a plane crash after having a terrible relationship to them that's just one of those things here's my question please did you assume she was telling the truth there i did but i do think it's an interesting question yeah because there are other times i mean when she says like we decided not to give the baby a name there are other times where she kind of like just to or i hate guitars you know she's like testing people and there was this moment when she says it where i'm like it's possible her parents are still around and she just hates them you know possible this character is the joker she could be telling you five different stories like how she got her scars but in that moment i believe it because she is not being antagonistic with him she is trying really hard to take any weight off of what she's saying and she also has gone into that environment seemingly going like, I get it. I need to fucking work on this. This has hit a breaking point. After the wedding in particular, you know? Which is also so interesting as a contrast to Melancholia, where that whole movie is basically built out of the wedding. And you put your character in a big white dress. You know, it's a set of mood. And you have this core kind of betrayal moment in the wedding of Melancholia, where you're like, well, that's a point of no return. That's going to fucking break everything. Who's she marrying in that one? She's marrying her separate ones? Or is it Skarsgard? She's marrying Alexander Skarsgard. And Kiefer's the dad? I remember Kiefer being really weird in that movie. Yeah. Am I wrong in thinking that Kiefer's her boss and that Stellan Skarsgard is his dad? Or did they cast Stellan and Alexander not as father and son? Alexander is indeed, you know, the husband. Stellan is the boss. So then Kiefer's the dad? And Kiefer is John Claire's husband. And so, yeah, right? He's the dad. Because Claire is Charlotte Kingsburg. Yeah. Who is... Oh, no. No, right. Isn't Scarsworth the boss and the dad? Yeah, maybe. But Claire is her sister. So Kiefer's her brother-in-law? Right. Kiefer's married to Scarlet. Yeah. Right. I have two questions. one did you know that Angelina Jolie made a movie in 2024 called Without Blood no no what is it war drama it was at TIFF I'm hearing this for the first time I'm holding she directed it she directed it I'm looking at James McGarvey's recent credit he's dropped this movie beautiful movie actually it is and he's obviously a very good cinematographer he literally he's got some wacky ass credits yes he also this movie felt like an opportunity for him to do some wacky-ass shit where he was like, hey, Rancy, here's some stuff I've always wanted to try. What if you literally set lenses on fire? They did that, Ben. They were like, let's experiment with burning lenses and camera gates. You know, they shot it in Academy, which is a classic thing to do, I think, when you're dealing with inside, you know, like doors, trees, things that are vertical. It's also so funny that that was just the standard prestige ratio for so long and any type of movie could fit in it. And now if a director is employing it, it's like psychological claustrophobia. What movies look like? A square frame versus a wide frame. Can I make a comment based on that information? It's like a hot shot. It's a hot shot. These are some hot shots. And then I just walk off. I want to make it clear, Ben. The camera was not on fire while they were filming. They weren't like lights. camera match action, but the sort of inky quality to it. He was trying to see what would happen if they caused that kind of intentional damage. They shot on reversal stock, which I think is a huge pain in the ass to use because you can't control light very well with it, and so the night scenes, they didn't, but otherwise, McGarvey wanted to fuck around. He wanted a non-naturalistic thing. Indeed, he was burning lenses, which created an inky look that he thought was cool. He shot Kevin, but I guess not You Were Never Really Here? Yeah. Which was shot by Thomas Townend. Not the word I know. I had another thing to say. Oh, is Joker played by Joaquin Phoenix? Arthur Fleck. The fourth or fifth best Joker in films? He's not even top three, I don't think. Well, so what? We're saying Ledger's number one. Ledger and Nicholson are at the top. You know, I haven't seen the Nicholson one for so long. I really need to revisit. It's pretty good. I mean, I guess you can put Phoenix in three. No, but I feel like you would easily just put, like, Mark Hamill cartoon joke. I was just saying, Mask of Phantasm was released in theaters. Hamill was a lock for third. Right. Many people would argue he should be higher than third. But there's no way that he's above, that he's below Phoenix, a man who won, the second man only in history. That's why people don't realize only two men have ever won an Oscar for playing the Joker. More people should do it. Isn't that crazy? There's only ever been two. So, okay, what happens in Dunggall? Can I go back to the wedding for a second? Yeah, no, that's, I mean, that is a vital, that's like the big, you know, thing in the movie, the big sequence. It's sort of like the big final battle of like, can we construct a set piece to make her happy, right? Like if we have this wedding and we presumably invite all our friends from our past lives. Right, and then you'll fuck me, right? Right. It'll be our wedding night. We're literally putting pageantry around this, and we're kind of like owning the country western thing in a hipster way rather than the full immersion that you have been struggling with. And it was where I kind of, the first time watching it, started to be able to fill in some of the blanks on their backstory of just seeing the guests at the wedding and being like, oh, these are their friends from their past life. There is whatever percentage of, like, family, but here are all the friends they have not been seeing. who are down with their weird shit, who are into like, yeah, they do weird fucking dancing and look at their outfits and whatever. And then she just takes it too far. She gets too loose. It stops being funny. It's not funny. She's going, kiss me, kiss me. You're like, oh my God. She kisses Sissy Spacek. And also it's like the baby is there. Everyone is like, she's still acting like this with the baby? I know she's had some drinks, but we thought she'd kind of chill out when she was a mother and then you feel like there's going to be a melancholia thing of like oh she's going to vindictively fuck someone else spoilers for melancholia because her husband isn't fucking her in her wedding it seems like it's going to be the guy the front desk guy right who she invites up and then just listens to him play the guitar and you're like this woman just like does not know what she needs but also he lets her go up to the room by herself and just is like, I'm going to apparently stay here at my wedding without you and just, like, make nice with my family. It feels like he's strategically like, I can't deal with whatever the fuck's going on up there. Let her do whatever the fuck she wants to do. I need to do damage control for all of our friends and family who I now embarrass myself in front of. And that's his priority, is, like, the reputation over the relationship. Or even just, like, really kind of seeing her as a person. I have to say about that what do we think about the John Prine song it was all over the place I do love that song I love John Prine Pulse soundtrack is really good in this yeah I was looking at a GQ article Lynn did an interview talking about her process with picking music for her movies she always has great soundtracks so the Cream Crossroads drop was actually suggested to her by Marty Scorsese. I mean, it makes sense that Marty might think of a song he always wanted to use. Yeah, for sure. The punk song in the beginning is her singing. Oh. As well as the cover of Love Will Tell Her, Tear Us Apart. It's also her. Is Jennifer Lawrence singing? No, it's Lynn. Really? Correct. That's wild. Isn't that cool? And I thought the Joy Division cover was excellent. It's excellent. Yeah. It's really good. Yeah. that is super fucking cool yeah Johnny Greenwood didn't do the music though the reprise at the end of the John Prine song and who's the other performer we should say yep was not planned it was just something that she spontaneously decided to do on the day of shooting which I think is really such a lovely scene and almost like a little moment of like being able to take a breath and then unfortunately you have the ending. Yeah. Well, you know, I kind of like the ending. I love the ending because it's just sort of like... It's the ending this movie has. It cannot be she comes out of the hospital. No. And he's like, look, I fixed up the house and I'm being better. And she's like, oh, you know what? That's what I need. Literally. I was so worried it was going to be that. This is so bad of me. I was there as a part of me like, can she just wake up and it was all fucking green? No, I just like this. She's like, no, enough. Like, yeah, no, I fully do not want to do this. Like we seen the forest on fire in the beginning. You've got to come back to the forest on fire at the end, you know. Right, and the final exchange with Nick Nolte of just like, you're kind of like returning to the earth, you know? Like you've lost your ability to engage with the idea of society and like polite manners and social interactions and all these sorts of things. I don't read it as, and look, obviously there are many things we read bizarrely in the Ratcatcher episode. A thing that I have thought about since that episode came out. And I do think since there was something weird to the fact that you and I both saw that movie really young. And I think kind of locked into our young reads of the movie not being able to pick up on some of the more complicated things. I guess so, but that was, I was not, that was no good that I was not like, you know, speaking of that. No, absolutely. But I just, like, I was genuinely watching that movie from a weirdly naive perspective that I just, in trying to rationalize it, I think has to come from, like, well, when I was, like, 12, my, like, sense of context clues was much lower than what literally is being depicted on screen. I completely missed that, like, in our description of it. Yes. Yes. Specifically just the context. They're assaulting the characters. There's these boys who are sexually assaulting this female character, and we, I just think, miss the mark and sort of defining the dynamics. Like, you know, we were kind of like, they are being bad or they are misbehaving. I think I said sexually charged bullying. Right. I understand red as me minimizing a thing rather than me having a bad brain and not interpreting a thing correctly. but I don't now I apologize for my last incorrect reading but I think I'm right about this yes the movie's about trauma oh my god like Toxie yeah it's about Toxie and Sergeant Kabuki Man NYPD that's why she's going into the woods because they're all hanging out there poultry geist I don't read the ending as a suicidal thing No, we're just done with it. Exactly. It's not her thing. It is metaphorical, but it's like metaphorically, it's metaphorically behavioral, if that makes sense. It is sort of like a worldview thing of like, I'm done playing the game. Well, also like you get her walking into the flames and then you get like the shot of the house with like the cake, right? Like doesn't it kind of kind of like there's there's like. I think it says welcome home, mommy. Yeah, or something like that. I feel like there is a, you could read the other thing of just her leaving. Like, she is, like, walking out. Yeah, because they're trying to be, like, are you now ready to be mommy? Yes. Right. And that story she tells to the therapist is about, like, seemingly kind of being abducted by a woman and feeling a relief at someone else taking her away from her parents, whoever knew how to deal with her. Or just also that, like, this 10-year-old girl, right? She says she was, like, a 10-year-old girl who, like, took me. the way like those girls on the beach want to take the baby right are like kind of like oh it's so fun to kind of play babysitter slash you know fake mom for this second and what is there like some acknowledgement even from a 10 year old who could not intellectualize these things of this kid needs something like this kid is not being seen or I mean even that like what I feel like there is something there also like we don't know if her parents yet like the parents were the ones who are like kind of like the mess here or it's her memory of it but like that she's just like seeing them as adults already not just her parents and being like you're so embarrassed like you're handling this so poorly and I wish I didn't belong to you that there is some feeling of her being like you're gonna keep trying to drag me back to raise this child and I don't know if I will ever be helpful to this child I also think like in a movie where you're questioning how much of what you're seeing is real and it's so perspective-based to a degree. All this fire is, like, super CGI and artificial. As we said, like, they're shooting day for night. Like, all of that stuff. And also, it springs up all over the place simultaneously, right? Right. Like, it's not like she, because she burns the diary, it starts a fire. No, it is. The whole force immediately comes up in flames. Right, yeah. Right. It's a little unnatural. It is purposefully unreal. And it's, you know, speaking to an ecstatic truth. Yep. the dialogue scene was... I'm just checking the... The dialogue scene was... The five-page monologue. They're like, no, thank you. Lynn Ramsey would do things like crawl around for a while, please. In this movie? They would. Johnny Greenwood, who scored her last two movies, was into it, was in Italy, was busy. He nearly came back. She obviously had the soundtracks, you know the needle drops and stuff she ends up not working with him I don't know it feels like it all sounds a little shambolic to me George Vasexa yes who's like a Nick Cave collaborator he's the guitarist from the Bad City but there are three music credits on this including Ramsey but he seems to have handled the lines for the score which I think is very good could not find the score from this movie anywhere I don't know if it's been released in any form but especially the final underscoring of the woods is cool. It's really good. It does weirdly feel like probably just because of the engine of Jennifer Lawrence and especially once she got Robert Pattinson on board, this movie kind of came together very quickly. Yeah, and obviously that's part of what we should talk about. Another thing is she plays music on set. Cameron Crowe thing. Peter Weir does that. People do that. just to amp people up. Scorsese, very protective of her throughout. We love you, Marty. The film goes to Cannes. I don't know if there is a listed budget. I can't imagine this cost a ton of money to me. No, it's not many locations. Did you see the Cannes? I thought it can. Did it change? Because I heard that it was not done. I think it did. Rewatching it, probably not drastically. Yeah, I felt like there were, especially in the opening sequences, it felt like it had been tightened up, but then, I don't know, you know, but like, yeah, it felt like it was like just barely done. Traditionally goes to canon as like, by the way, the movie's not finished. Right, I'm still working. I mean, it was sort of a weird canon, but it was fairly strong. Yeah, I feel like there were a lot of great films. I think, you know, it was interesting. Yeah. It was ignored again, awards-wise. Yeah. And it landed positively, but then the movie deals happens, and everyone's kind of like, are they seeing something we're not getting here? Well, I think what they, I mean, I from afar had not seen this movie. I was like, well, it has movie stars in it. Like, I imagine they think they can sell it based on that, and they did do a good job with the substance. And what's it about? It's about Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson, like, getting naked and being crazy? Yeah. That sounds like something you could sell. Sure. Right? I don't know. There was a lot of skepticism at Cannes about that number. They bought it for a lot of money. I also, you know, I feel like I've talked to... I saw it last October. Yeah, it was a couple quick. And it was a Cannes in May. So it was all pretty fast. Right. The problem is when you hear something like Mubi bought the Lin Ramsey movie for $20 million, dollars a filmmaker who has never had a movie really exceed 10 million dollars globally right even with two a-list stars no like all of our movies in fact have made about 10 million exactly uh and like a million or two domestically you sort of go like what is the calculation they're doing here and for people like us who are like very deep in the weeds on the movie industry but also are not working in fucking distribution or whatever you used to be able to read like Fox Searchlight has bought X movie for $12.5 million and go like, okay, back of napkin math. They're hoping they can put whatever amount into marketing and get it to this amount domestically and assume that they can then sell the foreign rights to other people or DVDs or whatever it is. You hear like movie has bought a thing for $20 million. It's the same as like Apple buying Coda for Sundance out of Sundance for 25, which I still think is the record and going like, well, that, sounds like it doesn't make sense at all, but also, they have obscured what the business model even is anymore. Right. It's the, like, equals, question mark, profit, right? Right. Like, aspect, the streaming aspect, where you're like, okay, I guess someone could argue that maybe Jennifer Lawrence's face on movie.com, you know, like... Yeah, that might be true. Yeah. I mean, like, I just don't know how to quantify it, right? It's impossible to quantify it. Her next movie, that she's more likely to work with her. What is the last movie Jennifer Lawrence made to have made $100 million at the domestic box office. Did passengers cross $100? The answer is passengers. It came out 10 years ago. 101? Did $100 even. Domestic. Now, Dark Phoenix made $246 worldwide, but that was an unambiguous bomb. And made like $65 domestic. Very poor. And Don't Look Up does not have box office. It does not. Now, I think Don't Look Up did well. Like on 4 Netflix, but like you know, outside of her two franchises which always did well, her last and passengers sort of scraped by. Yeah. But her last real fucking hit is American Hustle. Yeah. Which was like a no kidding hit. Yes. Crazy to consider. But she's also part of that. She's part of it. And like before then, I guess it's Silver Linings. Yeah. She's got, and this is where I guess why I was thinking about Angelina, where I'm like, we all agree she's a movie star. She's someone people care about. She's still famous. She's taken kind of a break and hasn't made people disinterested in her. She's not the cool young thing anymore, but she's still a thing. But you are kind of like, at the end of the day, I wouldn't buy her movie thinking, oh, Jennifer Lawrence will get me 40 mil, 60 mil. The big thing, because the two franchises are the two franchises, and I would argue she added a tremendous amount to both of them, but you also can't give her full credit for those numbers. I would argue the thing that made her stats look so insane to everyone was Silver Linings and American Hustle. He's grown up. That's the thing. Even 10, 15 years ago, the idea of, oh my god, it's like a fucking dramedy that is R-rated, that is crossing $100 million, even if she's not the only person there, she in both cases kind of came out of the movie with the most energy, was the sicky thing, and they were like, if she can do that, then she can fucking do anything. And then, as you said, she pushes the limits and makes a couple movies that are more off-putting and immediately audiences are like, yeah, we're not going to go there with you. We'll go there selectively when you're doing something we're already interested in. But I don't know what the strategy for this movie should have been. I don't think there was one. I really do think they were just like, maybe we can pull a substance, even though I'm sure everyone at the team at the time knew this was not going to be a substance level movie. The substance is like, I mean, I like the substance a lot, but it's like a kind of like campy, outrageous body horror, dark comedy. And it's a lightning in a bottle fest. Yes, and it had the kind of yeah, I think, I'm sure they thought they could make the kind of meta-narrative of like Lawrence as a mother and Lawrence coming out as this like serious actor again after this like time off. But like that's less, that's a less kind of like so different than never taken Demi Moore seriously before. Right. And the substance is quote unquote like demanding in that it's very violent or whatever. But this is a this is a demanding watch. It's not something you tell your friends to go see automatically. No, and substance was demanding in a way that felt like a challenge that people wanted to take. Can you fucking handle the substance? Right, like people were like fainting in, you know, like screenings and things like that. Like that's like a kind of dare as opposed to this which is to be like can you handle this movie because it's like grueling yeah right and the longest movie ever you look at the substance which like opened well but then really fucking held in there right and was seen as like is this going to be on like the outside of maybe a best actress nomination and then you're like it gets fucking picture and director she almost wins actress like all this stuff and what kept that movie alive did really kind of feel like it was the fucking memes not to be reductive but it was just like huh this movie has like crystallized five things that now you can just use the image as shorthand and i did think that created some fomo of people who weren't in it being like i gotta see what this fucking thing is with demi moore in the mirror no because everyone keeps saying this it had a legitimate cultural footprint right so if you're watching this movie at canon you're like fuck jennifer lawrence and robert penson are doing weird non-verbal things. Is this thing going to produce 80,000 memes? But that's not really understanding the relationship to memes that feed into the value of the actual project versus the things that become decentralized and completely removed. You can't fake it. It happens or it doesn't happen. Right. Totally. How many Golden Globes has Jennifer Lawrence been nominated for? Really good question. Including this film, of course. Yes. Winter's Bomb. Did they nominate all the actual Oscars, American Hustle, Silver Linings, Joy? Of course they did. Okay. And Die My Love is five. And they nominated her for Don't Look Up. They sure did. That's six. And I'm trying to think anything else they would try. They didn't do any of the Hunger Games. No. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. Is there another one in there? There is. There's one more. Comedy. It's a comedy. Oh, did they nominate her for No Heart Feel? They sure did. That's kind of cool of them. She's a seven-time nominee. How many wins? she won for American Hustle. She won for American Hustle, right? She has won three. Three. Okay. So she won for American Hustle. She won for Silver Linings. Yes, of course. She won the Oscar, of course. Yes. And she won for, they didn't give it to her for Winter's Bone. No. Did they give it to her for Joy? They gave it to her for Joy. See, that's a real Jennifer Lawrence, you got to go away for a moment. I really think so. I'm sorry, but I sort of vaguely remember her being like, um, I'm sorry. Guys, come on, please. It's Best Actress in a Comedy, but she beat Amy Schumer in Trainwreck and Melissa McCarthy in Spy, which are like, you know, genuine actress in the comedy movies. Yeah. And then like Maggie Smith, Lady in the Van, Lily Tomlin, Grandma, like, sure, you know, we can. But that's a year kind of designed to make Judd Apatow mad. Yeah. It is a little bit. It is. Pretty much. It is. We were, Allison and I were just on Good Morning. And Joy, by the way, is not a comedy. No, it's not. No, it's not. No. It is. No. So, arguably less so than any other David O. Russell movie, including his two war movies. Yeah, it has a kind of, I guess, like a sort of antic tone, but no jokes. It's not funny. Yeah. But no, we just did a good one, Jesse David Fox's podcast, and talked about the Martian year being the year that broke everybody. And we're like, Martian's funnier than a lot of movies that have won Golden Globe comedy. I argued that on Critical Dirling. But it does feel similar to giving the award to Jennifer Lawrence where everyone was like, you know what? Fucking enough is enough. This is just the year that breaks us. This isn't the most egregious case. But Judd Abatell will never forget. Yeah. People were mad about it at the time. Now, what did it be? Let me see. We went over this. Well, so Traynor was nominated. Yeah. What were the other three, David? Like Best Pictures. Yeah. Musical or Comedy. Big Short. Which, like, why didn't they give it to that? because that was a big Oscar contender that is a satire. That is actually a weird movie. Like, it has dramatic elements, but, like, you can call that a comedy. Absolutely. And then Joy and Spy. Spy, a great comedy, very fun. And Joy, not very funny. Yeah. Got a mop. Yeah. Can I throw out one other thing? Just because in Executive Producer and Critical Darlings and staying engaged with the feedback and everything, and us coming out of Winterfall where we had to cover some new releases that were more limited releases, I feel like there is always this dialogue I see with our listeners, people who do not live in what are kind of deemed the major movie markets, getting frustrated when they have to listen to podcasts that are talking about films that they feel like, I'm six months away from getting to see this. I don't know if this ever comes in my theater. I have to wait until streaming. And when you add on to that the festival circuit and a movie like this where you're like, I'm seeing everyone I follow online talk about it in May. and then everyone who missed out on that basically gets to see it in whatever, September, October. And then I'm waiting all the way here to that. Why can't these things like be more democratic now? And the counter argument, and I'm not saying this in a positive or negative way, but it is just like a reflection of reality, is like the flop ball problem. This happened, I would argue, in 2021 as well, when the studios were still feeling so sheepish about theatrical and there were theaters that reopened there were more screens than they had things to fill them with and stuff like tatan was like opening on 900 screens opening weekend and there was this little moment of hope of like maybe this just means that like smaller movies get out wider and faster space for them and because of the internet we don't need to platform and this can just get out there and what happened was that like most if not all those movies belly flopped and like major financial baths were taken and it was sort of a necessary sacrifice to fill screens with things and the data was accumulated and they walked away And then it happened again this fall which i think was an end result of the strikes from like two years ago caused like a lot more gaps in scheduling we finally got to the business end of that there are because of post-production timelines now finally the few tentpole movies that came on either side were interrupted by the strikes and so there's a lot of like guess what smashing machine 2 000 screens opening weekend Die, my love. And with these bigger stars also, especially... A lot of times these people write into their contracts, especially if they don't want to go to streaming. You buy this movie, you are promising a wide release. Now, it doesn't promise you have to open wide in a lot of cases. No, because that'd be crazy. But a lot of these distributors just go like, fuck, let's just do it. If we have to get to 2000 at some point, why just not do it now? And the negative is, the thing bombs, and then the headline becomes why the fuck are these stars making these self-indulgent movies that no one wants to see this is a failed commercial play and it creates more conservatism in what gets made if smashing machine had been well-reviewed it would have opened bigger and done fine i mean that's not ambiguous if it had been another movie basically well that is true but like let's say that movie had gotten raves and it's basically the same movie obviously that wasn't going to happen because people didn't really respond to it that way. But I think the raves and the you must see Dwayne Johnson play this athlete would have gotten enough butts in seats for it to make. So what did it open to? It was the lowest opening he's ever had. It opened to like five or six. Right, and probably could have gotten to like 15 or whatever. A more respectable kind of A24 big opening. Totally. There was the fucking Taylor Swift album release. Yeah, there was. Totally side-swiped them. they were going to get some default box office from being the only thing. Yes, there was that too. But that was something where I was like, I think the reviews did it in. Die of My Love felt more complicated. It was like, not good reviews, but the movie's a tough sell. No one knows what it's about. I don't think people knew it too. The advertising is weird. It's hard to be like... And it's hard to sell this. Yeah, that's it. It doesn't sound appealing to a lot of people to be like, this is going to be a look into this woman's kind of downward mental spiral. No way. And, like, if a movie like this is going to catch on, it kind of needs to catch on organically. You can't sort of, like, build up ahead of, like, need to see hype on it. You need to, like, have this movie find its champions organically and have it dissipate. And it's like you're releasing movies in a way where there's no ability for there to be, say, like, a letterbox growth, you know? of people claiming it early, of obscene logs, of being like, huh, I agree with this person's taste most of the time. Like, things that are kind of, you know, the distributors are trying to understand more of how to get more difficult films to catch on at the box office, which is like, there is a younger, more engaged online cinephile audience, and how do you get through to them? And you can't just kind of fucking blitzkrieg them. Yeah, but I think also, you know, we're looking at like, A24 obviously knows what they're doing, even if I feel like the Smashing Machine was unusual for them in having an actor like The Rock and kind of being like, how is this going to go? But like, Christy, you know, which got a wide release, a disastrous wide release, that was Black Bear, a new distributor, you know, they've made a production company, they haven't been in distribution very long at all. If the movie doesn't sell at Toronto and they're like, fuck it, we're putting it out in six weeks, why? Yeah, and so like that just felt like a kind of, like, really, like, Hail Mary endeavor that obviously didn't work out for them. There's that insane anecdote that, like, six weeks out or whatever, four weeks out, the movie was, like, testing to open to, like, three. And they were, like, disaster. And Sidney Sweeney goes, like, great, I'll fucking amp up the promo mode. She does the most insane press tour anyone's ever done. She didn't do the right press tour. But she does everything. I know she did a press tour. And they're like, oh my god, the public awareness of this movie has gone from, like, eight to ninety-eight. and then it opened lower than it had been tracking a month earlier. It's a two-hour, 15-minute movie about domestic violence. Right, that's the thing. And the only thing Sydney Sweeney succeeded in promoting in that press tour was her cleavage and what's going on here. It wasn't like, huh, I really want to see this performance. Yeah, but I mean, again, it is a movie where you're like, if you give a fair logline description, and I think she's great in the movie, but it is like, this is a movie about a boxer that you probably don't know about unless you're deep in boxing. No, not a... And the other half of it is going to be about how her abusive husband attempts to murder her. Right. Like, really, it's like terrible. It's like a terrible, scary movie. Incredibly brutal depiction of a controlling abusive husband. Which is another thing with all these flop fall, movie star kind of prestige project failures. It's like, you guys want to see a Springsteen biopic? Yeah. It's about the period where he wrote the album we don't talk about that much. and it's mostly him just kind of trying to work through his childhood trauma. You're like, well, that's the least fun version of it you could sell me. Right. Smashing Machine, what's it about? It's sort of an addiction drama, but it's more about the guy just trying to kind of make peace with himself as the addiction stuff's going on in the background. And David and I have both, like, contended this whole time, I like that movie, have both contended, like, there is not one of those movies where it underperforming or flopping is inexplicable, where you're like, people should have fucking shown up to this. There was just kind of a belief that they could make Gabbo happen. And I think it's all a pipeline problem. I think you put Die My Love in one-third as many screens as they put it in opening weekend, and it would have made the exact same amount of money, but in fuller theaters. You could probably have put it on one-fifth as many screens, and it would have done the same. Well, it came out November 7th, 2025. It opened number eight at the box office. It's a perfect Thanksgiving movie. $6 million. Yeah. It ends up at? Five domestic, ten worldwide. So it is her classic number. Yeah, it's her highest grossing domestically. Sure. But lower international than she usually does. They all make ten. She's a tenner. Except for Ratcatcher, I think literally all her movies have made $10 million. Number one at the box office is a pretty successful franchise sequel that is new this week. It's not Zootopia. No, no, no. Because you would describe that as a fucking juggernaut. That was a very big movie. By the time this episode comes out, Zootopia has probably taken the crown as 2025's highest gross. There's no question. It did the legs on that thing. And also, they love it in China. They sure do. I believe they've elected Zootopia to prime minister. He'd be a good preeminist. Why don't they kiss, though? The bunny and the fox, they have to kiss. It just raises a lot of questions. I know, but I'm just saying. I just think Utopia is like, we are not ready to talk about hybrid marriage between species in our future. But they're like, we know you want to talk about it. I agree with you. The movie is wiggling its eyebrows. It's acting all coquettive. What do you mean? I would never. I feel like you fucking have pages that you're just not showing. You have files. Okay. It's fairly successful. Yeah, this is like a solidly successful sequel. A two? Nah, it's too complicated. It's too complicated. It's like... Is it like a tendril? Yeah, it's like the latest of these movies. There have been like six or something. I don't know. Plus a couple of spinoffs. It's new this week. It's opening to $40 million. We all saw it. We all thought it was pretty good. I don't know if Allison saw it. It's gone from my brain. What did it end up at? This is so recent. It's not the magician movie, is it? No, it's not now, you see me. No, it's Predator Badland. Predator Badland. I didn't see it. People like that movie, though. Yeah, it's a good movie. It is a funny way to describe that franchise that is 100% accurate. We're like, how many have there been? Five, eight, ten? Depends on your perspective. Isn't there like the Predator? predator like with a without yeah there's both predators and the predator predator yeah yeah uh no it's a good movie it's a fun movie that's the best part of the anaconda movie that they made the new one is when Jack Black is writing the script and he's like the anaconda I remember asking you Allison does it have any juice and you said that's the one joke he writes the word the and I laughed number two is a romantic drama that I did not see but heard was fairly unhinged It's the Colleen Hoover one. And what is it called? Is it called Without You? No. Were any of those words right? You was correct. Is it called Forgetting You? Closer. Is it called Forgetting You? No. Is it two words? Yeah. I can picture the poster, though. It's something you. Regretting You? There you go. Yeah. Regretting You. I listened to the big pick trying to explain what that movie was about, and I could not make sense of it. Directed by Josh Boone? It was like someone trying to explain quantum physics. of, of course, The Faults in Our Stars and The New Mutants. Yes, of course. With the big four, Alison Williams, Kenna Grace, Dave Franco, and Mason Thames. Kenna Grace has been working so much that I'm, like, questioning if there's a Hermione Granger, Time Turner. I also kind of forget who she even is, but then I'm like, but who's this? Like, this actress reminds me of someone. It's always her. Anyone who's a McKenna Grace type. She had, like, five movies in 2025. She was in Five Nights at Freddy's. She was in Regretting You. She's in the fucking Screen 7 coming out. She's in that. What else did she have last year? I mean, shit that I've never heard of. What We Hide. Sure, of course. An anniversary? Well, yes. A kind of horror comedy about race. She's now the lead of the next It's about a Chinese-American high schooler who undergoes ethnic modifications. Surgery. Yeah, yeah. But yes, she is the new Hunger Games heroine. Yes, she's in the new Hunger Games, which is the Haymitch. Sunrise on the Reaping. Right. Which Jennifer Lawrence is supposed to reprise her role in. Yeah, supposedly, I think I imagined in a scene. And the movie that will finally win Glenn Close for Oscar. I said this before. I don't know why they did not try to get Glenn Close an Oscar nomination for Wake Up Dead. I re-watched that movie last week. She's very solid in it. She's good. She's good in it. She has a major role. We nominated her for fucking Hillbilly Elegy. You can't just get her a fucking... It feels like they never thought about that movie. This is the first game. I really kind of love that movie. Knives Out of the Last Onion both got Oscar nominations. Rian Johnson is not unknown to them. Glenn Close is a big model. Are you not obsessed with getting her an Oscar? She wouldn't win. there's too strong in the arrogant way though that movie feels like ryan johnson rolling up his sleeves and going like guys i'm gonna try to make it easy for you i understand the glenn close oscar thing keeps butting up against the problems of the movie she's in a repellent dog shit what if i make a movie that is respectable and i give her all the kinds of scenes you would want yeah uh number three the box office in the film we discussed a lot in a future episode but I don't think either of us have seen. It is a horror sequel. Oh, it's Black Phone 2. Black Phone 2. Yes. The Grabber. Yes. It's back. You'll hear that in a couple weeks. Yes. Yes. Which was a decent hit. Well, Mason Thames, of course. The McKenna Grace. I assume it's Thames, right? Is it not pronounced like the river? I thought it was Thames. I have no idea. Who knows? I guess I never thought about it. No one knows. No one's ever seen his face. But he had three number one movies. He did. In 2025. and two of them are in this current top five you're reading. He is the male lead of both. Of both regretting you. Or no, he's a male lead in regretting you. He is the young male lead. Sure. He is Blackface 2 and How I Met Your Dragon. Yeah, How I Met Your Dragon. Number four at the box office is something I've never heard of. You've never heard of? What the fuck is this? It is a, oh my God, a biological drama film, biographical drama film. Biographical. Is it face-based? It must be because Zachary Levi is involved. But Amazon MGM. Oh, no. This is that one. It's like a survival movie, isn't it? With, like, boats. Yeah. Is it that one? I don't think so. I don't see a boat. I see a dog. The survival boat one is weirdly directed by Joe Carnahan. Yeah. And Josh Duhamel is also, I think. That is not this. That is not this? Is this movie called, like, Inventing Sarah? Sarah? Sarah's Oil? Sarah's Oil. He was trying to hone in on that fucking Lorenzo franchise. See if he could make like an old brand. It's about, it's like a true story. Yeah. I don't really, I don't think I can summarize in time what the fuck this is about. Lorenzo's oil though. Great joke in Slitsville. Yes. Incredible joke. Because what is it? There are two Blink Check movies that are major running jokes in Slitsville. And someone just posted on Reddit. you will never guess which two. Well, a lot of Lorenzo's oil. That movie is very funny. Number five at the box office is a movie that a lot of people have been trying to beat the drum for as like the dad movie of the year that is good. It is not good. It is not good? You think it's bad? I don't like this movie, as you know. Alex Ross Perry recently called it his second favorite movie of the year to us. Somewhat is it? Oh, Nuremberg. Film is Nuremberg. Yeah, I asked Alex Ross Perry what his top ten for the year was, and he said no point in wasting time. I will not dignify 10 movies with any positive endorsement. By the way, Nuremberg, Iron Lock on number 2. I miss Nuremberg. Wait, what was it? Number 1? One battle. Nuremberg, number 2, who can be bothered to write things more? After that, the movies ended. Cinema was over. But Nuremberg, a very solid hit, forgiven that it was, you know, sort of, I mean, maybe that's over the top, because it made 14 domestic. But 44 worldwide. I mean, that's pretty good. Pretty good. Especially for a movie that was not that well received. And I was going to say, in the flop fall, you never would have predicted Nuremberg is going to multiple times outgross Smashing Machine. Yeah. No, I mean, it did all right. It's long. It's boring. It doesn't really have a grasp on stuff. And I really do think it makes the terrible mistake of having a dark beat Ronnie Malek realizing that Herman Goering is not a good guy. that's just insane other people have argued with me on this like no that's not what it's about I'm like it's a little bit what happens though I'm sure Russell Crowe is getting an effervescent he's alright I mean he's feather light touch performance it's not feather light touch Russell is an actor I basically always like like I am never against a Russell Crowe performance even if I think he's phoning it in or he's being a little silly or whatever and it's like a good use of him in that you're like yes Russell Crowe is someone I would kind of want to like me. Even if you were Herman Goering and I was not his friend. Nor did I need to be. Like, I mean, so then, yeah. Okay, number six at the box office. Was nominated for a bunch of Oscars including Best Picture. Number six at the box office was nominated for a bunch of Oscars including Best Picture. Is it Hamnet? No. It's been out for three weeks. Made 17 domestic, 40 worldwide. 17 domestic, 40 worldwide movie. What were you about to say about it? It's a... Who's the distributor? Focus. It's a fuck-us movie. Mm-hmm. Fuck-us features. You know, it's a director that makes movies. Oh, it's a director that makes movies. Okay. He's got an actor who's been making them with him for a while at this point. Okay, so they're a team. They've become a bit of a team. They've become a bit of a team. And it got a Best Picture nomination. Yeah, and he got her her third acting nomination. There we go. Bagonia. Recently discussed. Yeah. 17 did that hit 20? No I just said 17 17 was the total the final and total but it did alright for a movie like that that's the thing do you guys like Pagonia? I like it we just did an episode about it re-watching it I liked it a lot more than I had the first time I watched it I was like very I was pretty down on it the first time I watched it I was not on mic for that so i didn't weigh in of course woman was guest on that episode story bard yeah um mayor um but uh mayor of blanktown i was i was very frustrated while watching that movie and then i got to the end and i was like huh i like the ending and like the ending not just as like big swing but like huh it's kind of sitting with me well and then i remember you and i texting about it that following week or two after we'd seen it sims and both being like i'm liking chewing on it The themes of it resonate with me. I don't find it like the most pleasant lot. But I have wondered if I watch it again, will it grow for me? The first 85 to 90% of it, I was like, this isn't for me. I'm just not into this. And then I did like it more with distance. So I don't know. Number seven at the box office is an anime movie. That was a solid hit. I'm sure Ben saw it or he wanted to at least. Okay. So does it star dogs and or cats? No. I mean, I don't know who it stars. It's an anime movie. Yeah, but dogs are cats is a valid question for that. But I don't know. It doesn't have animals in the picture. Is it an animated animal movie? I don't think so, but I don't know anything about it. Your awareness is this low? Yeah, I don't know about you. He does have a dog who's a chainsaw. He's not in it a lot. The dog? Wait, the dog turns into a chainsaw? Well, his head becomes a chainsaw. It's like the guy can turn into a chainsaw, right? Multiple chainsaws. With head and his arms. Yeah, if he wants to be. I didn't know there was a dog. I realized it's actually kind of cute. We're out of the top ten. And they have a really nice name. I don't need to be that. Time I Love, nine is Deliver Me From Nowhere, which is not very good, unfortunately. And ten is Tron Aries, which is also not very good. You know, fuck all. They made some bad movies. Yeah. That was a mistake by them. Tron Aries is another funny one because it's like the blockbuster version of what we're saying about the prestige movies where they're like, why did Tron Aries underperform? And I'm like, how much time do you have? Right, right. And also just like, how much hunger do you think there was for another Tron movie? Here are 20 road signs I pulled off the freeway warning you to make this movie. As someone who loves Tron movies, it's like, the appetite is low. So you better make a fucking exceptional Tron movie. If you want to do that, it better be so good. And they're like, oh, oh, we made it really bad. Did you not want it to be good? It's weird that people didn't automatically want it. We thought the Tron name would sort of carry it over the line. It's like, no, no, no. You need good to get Tron over the line. They put out the hook in this movie as Tron comes to our world. Most of it takes place in downtown Los Angeles. I'm like, well, that's the opposite of what I like about Tron. Right, right. You're like, so we're not going to spend a ton of time in the incredibly cool-looking digital world. But my first thought there is, I guess that must have been a strategic decision because the last one was so expensive and it didn't quite hit expectations, so maybe that's the way to keep the cost down. And they're like, no, no, no, don't worry. It costs $220 million. It's not a cheap-looking movie. Go to jail. Why the fuck isn't this all inside the computer if you spent that much? And then they're also like, you know who should be the anchor? You know who people love now. That Jared Leto. Right. They offered it to Brett Ratner and Bryan Singer first. Now Griff, as we wrap our short but eventful miniseries on Lynne Ramsey, do you want to give me your top five Lynne Ramsey movies? Which is all of her movies, because she's made five. Yes, that is true. I'm just going to go off the dome from my heart here. Yes. You Were Never Really Here is my favorite. Yes. I would put Morven Caller at number two. Yes. I would put, I'm going to do Ratcatcher 3, Kevin 4, Die My Love 5. Right. I think she has made five excellent films. I have Morven Caller first. That's the film first that I truly adore. And then You Were Never Really Here and Ratcatcher 3rd, Die My Love, and Kevin. Yeah. Allison, do you prefer to not? talk about Kevin. I would rather not. Do you firmly disagree with either of these rankings? I don't know. Or what is your favorite Lynn Ramsey movie? It would be Morven Color. Yeah, I think, you know, the scene of her going through the kind of nightclub with the headphones on would be like one of the greatest scenes in cinema that I can think of. And your least favorite, Kevin or Die My Love? Or is it something else? Do you not like Hammer Man? Probably Die My Love. I do like Hammer Man, but I do feel like that movie always felt to me like it could have gone on longer like it just feels so boiled down i don't know but i do like kevin here's the thing that's the thing i do like yeah we need to talk about i i love how like tight and like stripped down you were never really here is but after doing the episode and reading the dossier and like having completely forgotten that a totally different cut and a longer cut was shown at can i now i'm just a little frustrated there's no way to watch that cut that i imported my like expensive Australian 4K and still there's no... I wish there was a Terrence Malick criterion release of like, here's just like 10 different versions. I don't know which one counts. Well, we're done talking about Lynn. We're done talking about Lynn. Next we will talk about Peter Weir. We're going right to him because we moved to help up. Yeah. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No. We'll do the blankies. We'll do the blankies next week. We'll do our awards. So there you go. So we do have a palate cleanser. We do have a palate cleanser. I hope you're happy. Oh, I bet you're going to eat it up. And we did recently put a Ben's Choice on the calendar, but I think it will be on Patreon. But we have quite a good one, I think. Pretty thrilled. But yeah, that's it. And then until next week, our Joe Reed Blankies episode will happen, one assumes. I mean, that's the plan. And then, hasn't it recorded yet? And then, are you writing songs? get to work. I have been. But more importantly, the Clem Dog, Sean Clemens, who loves to punch him up, has been sending me a lot. There you go. He's been sending me some voice memos. There's some really exciting shit happening in our text thread. I don't want to overhype it, but we've been burning the midnight oil. By which I mean every six weeks, one text. And then, yeah, the Cars That Eat Paris will kick off our Peter Weir miniseries, and March Madness will kick off. That's probably about to be announced, right? I mean, it's February 22nd, so pretty soon. So look forward to voting for whoever we cover and all that. And that's that, and I'm done, and I'm done talking. Goodbye. Well, actually, that's not how the podcast ends. I regret to inform you. Allison, thank you for being here. Thanks for having me. People should listen to Critical Darlings. Yeah, please listen to it. We do so much talking on it. You know what? I listen to some of these podcasts. I queue them up. I pressed it for hours. And people complain about our show being long. At least we're filling it up with words. And I think you folks do an excellent job as well. Talking on microphone, pressing record, and making sure people can actually hear it later. So this episode is coming out on February 22nd. Yes. As far as the run leading up to the big award ceremony, where are you guys at? Pretty close. Pretty close. We're like three weeks away, though. Let me see it. Let me see it. I'm a little sketchy here. That might be the secret agent episode. I think the secret agent episode will have just come out, and the next episode will actually be a nice little bit of synchronicity. Our buddy Joe Reed talking sentimental value. And then, yeah, yeah. The final three episodes of this season will be Sinners, one battle with some sort of final predictions, and then a recap. there you go Allison anything else you want to plug I don't know you got great articles all over vultures.com go check them out you reviewed Sirat you must have written that a while ago no I read it this morning you reviewed Melania I did thank you for doing the things that I write you liked Send Help I like Send Help Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. I was just looking at a recent. I appreciate it. Oh, my Wuthering Heights review will go up on, I think, Monday. Yeah, it'll be up. You've already filed it? I have filed it. But have you had a chance to, and this I guess goes to both of you, to try out Oakberry's tie-in menu yet? I would love to have. Because I feel like you can't really speak about the movie. This is a fair assessment. I don't even know what Oakberry is. Yeah. I will say there was a point, and I included this in my review, where I said that the interior design choices very much reminded me of Lily Allen's Brooklyn Brownstone. Interesting. Yes. I texted this to, of course, our friend, your former podcast co-host, our past Matt Singer yesterday. Oakberry, which I guess is some chain that sells something. Yeah. Like acai bowl, acai bowl. Yeah, had a big sign outside, a love you can taste, and they have two items, a kiss-me bowl and a haunt-me bowl. And both of them are clearly cups and not bowls. Big lie. I mean, I'm happy for Matt because, honestly, he ends up eating a lot of, like, pancake and burger-based menus. Yeah, this is healthier. It's a positive trend for him. Yeah, for someone who eats a lot of movie-themed tie-in menus, it's good that he'll get some vegetable, or some fruit, at least. Right. Yeah. yeah and maybe if like project hail mary can do like a metamucil tie-in these are just the things that would really help the singer family probably like a sweet green or something like that yeah uh maybe that's for super mario galaxy um thank you for being here thank you uh thank you all for rating reviewing and subscribing i'm thanking you for a thing i'm asking you to do please uh this will be ignored much like jennifer lawrence plugging her movie at the end of a hot one's episode tune in next week for the blankies and a special bonus treat we want to kind of shout out uh matt johnson and jay mccarroll of nirvana the band the show and nirvana the band the show the movie now in theaters one of our favorite movies in a long time we we got offered the opportunity to have them on the podcast which we could not pass on but because of our silly schedule booking and recording very far in advance. The thing it made the most sense to have them do was another Oops All Burger Report episode on Patreon, which we have titled Burger Report, the segment, the episode. So that is already out now on Patreon. We moved our schedule around to get that out fast. So the Wicked Films will be happening next month to finish off our Oz series. But as of February 21st, on the Blank Check Patreon, Berger Report, this segment, the episode. And we wanted to play you a little preview clip of that episode. A little sample, a little taster, a little slider for your enjoyment right here. We're here today to do something very important with two very important guests. This show, going on for over a decade. There was one episode where I came in and said, I'm sitting on a really hot scoop. I went to the Apple Pan in Los Angeles I was on a trip to Los Angeles was eating a burger at the counter and who saddles up next to me but Chivo himself Emmanuel Lubezki Academy Award winning cinematographer yeah great artist and I go Sims I got something really hot to tell you in this next episode you're never going to believe it and I offer my report of seeing one of America's greatest living film artists one of the world's greatest living film artists chomped down on a burger crunch and Sims goes, you're never going to believe this. I went to Bear Burger over the weekend. It was Moo Burger, but that's okay. And I saw Michael Shannon, Academy Award nominee, Michael Shannon also eating a burger, and we decided this is a new segment. Every single episode, we're going to do a burger report and check in on which famous people, famous as we like to call them, we have seen eating a burger in the last week. Usually nobody. The well ran really dry really, really fast. Right. We live in New York, too. It's like, you know, it's not like you live in Hollywood. Well, go ahead. But then we found out producer Ben, our own intro outro meister himself. Yes. Had in past lives worked at celebrity hotspot restaurants with famed burgers and was able to reach into the archives and start giving us a burger report at the end of every episode. eventually that well runs dry and we decide we need to start soliciting from listeners we set up a voicemail and then we forgot about this voicemail line for a couple of years and so now basically every once a year about every year but the whole point is we don't remind people and every time we do one we act like it's probably the last one right never doing it ever again but today we are fucking opening up the voicemail bank and we're listening to people tell us about times they've seen a famous person eat a burger. It's so ridiculous that these guests are here for this nonsense. It feels kind of correct. Yeah, I agree. You're here. First off, the big project of your life, but specifically the project that you're promoting right now, is a similar kind of decades-long investment into the mounting, the pyramid of bits. Is that fair to say? Yeah. We've been making this. The pyramid of bits? you say bits or bids I said bits but we could bid we could bid on the bits we could do a bit bid yeah I understand the metaphor it's clean began as a bit but pyramid is not correct it's more like a bit organism that you keep feeding it becomes gigantic but it's out of control the bite of a burger turns into many burgers And what seemingly starts as something very silly like, oh, it's just celebrities eating burgers. Right. It becomes something. It's now become a show format. It's become a show format. Yeah. Literally, you have a format. And we could spin out and become a film. We're looking to sell. Honestly, we're looking really hard to sell. We feel like this is our exit strategy. Oh, in the big picture? Like, this is going to be. Well, that's a rival podcast. We don't want to talk about them. But in our big picture, we love them. We're friends, but competitors. Right, right, right. Right. In our picture, it's like we're looking for that golden parachute. And this may be it. Can we just fucking sell Burger Report? Can Carson Daly host it? You know? Is it a gotcha show? Is it like a... Carson Daly's the guy with the juice right now. That's a good call. I feel like he's really coming to his own. I think he's kind of figured his thing out. Carson Daly? Carson Daly. I thought he was done. I'm worried that you're making these burger episodes at the furious rate of one per year. and you're trying to now sell it as a format that, in your own words, is going to lead to retirement. It's a supply and demand kind of thing. That's my point. Right. That it doesn't seem like you have either. I think people are demanding it and we're going like, no. Half of them also will not be about people eating burgers. It'll be more like, I don't know, I think I saw a champagne to taco. Well, that's what you guys are here to do. We need to judge how successful these are as Burger Reports and we should say, our guest today, from Nirvana the Band the show and Nirvana the band the show the movie but also Blackberry and a thing I want to lead with because I got questions Matt and Bird break loose yes one of our high moments in terms of artistic achievement Matt Johnson and Jay McCarroll are here and we're so happy to be here thank you so much thank you for having us genuinely thank you for being here it's an honor do your listeners know what this place looks like they've caught glimpses but why what's your impression I just want to give people an image that they can maybe assign to this podcast. It feels like we are backstage at a video game store, backstage at a toy store. For sure. It's a behind-the-scenes look. It's the most conducive environment to a conversation I've ever been in in my life. Ben is blushing. Look at it. Look how proud Ben is. We're at four distinct and discreet, almost student-style desks. Yeah, professional. Yeah, it's almost like we're a draft to somebody who's like a professional draftsman. Yeah. And they're at perfect 90-degree angles to one another, and we're all facing each other in the middle as though we're about to judge something that's going to happen. We are. We're going to judge these phone calls. Yeah. Imagine the LAN party that we have in here. Oh, man. Let's bring in some CRT televisions. We really could. The gas cables. Yeah. Anyway, yeah, it's an honor to be here, and we're so happy to be here. and I don't think the burger format is going to travel outside. You haven't heard the colds yet, though. That's what I'm saying. And maybe, I don't put the pressure on you. I don't. No, no, no, no. Listen, listen. I believe that the way to treat a friend is to give them the kind of advice that will truly improve their life. I agree with that. I think that blunt talk is usually... And this isn't even blunt. Again, it may be incredible, but the idea that this is going to turn into, like, Carson Daly, this is insanity, guys. You guys got this hot movie. you're tapped into the culture. You know what the public wants. You should listen to us. You should listen to the calls. And then I want to hear you go, hey, it's more of this, it's less of this. Maybe I'm leaving tonight with the rights to burger report. We'll cut you into this big time. Big time. Because there's something here and we haven't quite cracked it. We made an entire episode of our show called The Burger which is centered around the magical properties of biting a burger and making a wish at the same time. Yes. Yeah. So that's a thing we haven't worked into this format yet. Are there still Wahlburgers in Toronto? I think there might be one at the airport. I think there's one at YYZ. Yeah, it looks like that's about it. Yeah, at the airport. I think there was nothing wrong with them. They were totally fine. I think it was a cultural mismatch, if I'm being totally honest. You walked in and it's a full standee of one of the Wahlberg brothers standing there as though he's still in Boston being like, Hey, Toronto, come on. These are the best burgers and Torontonians are too shy. Not the guy who'd be your first choice. I think we're getting down to third, fourth, or fifth. But by the time you're at the guy who's been given a burger franchise. Yes. I don't mean to disparage them. The show, at the very least, was inspiring. We made a whole episode of our show about it. Great episode. But it was not a cultural match. Yeah. They thought that maybe the East Coast-ism of Massachusetts would drive all the way up. Right. But there's a hard cut at the border. It's like, you guys like hockey? Like baseball, right? We're, you know, we're near water. Yeah. We're the same vibe. No, no, that's fresh. And it's a huge, huge difference. What's Toronto's best burger? That's very touching. I assume that's a contentious record. It always is. It depends who you ask. For the longest time, there was a place that was just, just outside the border of Etobicoke called Apache Burger. That is not changing the name. They don't give a damn. Something of a sensitive name. Yeah, that's right. And this place was famous for having burgers that were so great that oftentimes sports figures like the Toronto Maple Leafs would drive out and have their burgers. But they recently switched from fresh to frozen and it was like they fell off a cliff. But I mean, look, they still have... Car broiled is the way they were doing it. Yeah, and it was old school, old school. Old car broiled. Burger's Priest is, I think, the other one. Burger's Priest sold to Harvey's. Like, everything changed. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That guy, that guy, that's Belanger's buddy, by the way. He's got an unbelievable story. Like, unbelievable. A summer that they were at summer camp and they needed to set up on their own. This is not my story to tell, but all I will say is... Like camping, you're saying? No, this is a children's summer camp, okay? And the owner believed that his son had gone on a cocaine-crazed rampage and was using the camp as a kind of orgy-slash-party zone. And in order to catch him, employed these two employees, one of which was the production designer of all of my films. The other was the guy who started Burgers Priest. to develop and instigate on their own a closed network hidden camera system throughout the camp where they could film and capture this renegade son doing all kinds of things. They did it and it worked. And they were like... They caught him? They caught him. They were like 14 years old. And they basically did a dragnet. What did they catch him doing? Yeah, they were. They got video evidence of his drug-fueled party mania that was happening at a children's camp. and anyway, so this guy goes on oh my god, but no this did not involve the campers, that was the big thing, it was like he would bring in outsiders, counselors, these types of things he was like a junior counselor? the guy doing it was the son of the owner so you can only imagine what his position in terms of the leadership yeah, literally, he decided this is mine to stomp on him, he was like Prince, who's the guy in Game of Thrones you know, who just gets it and now he's going to be as despotic as he wants to be I've never watched Game of Thrones. I've never seen that. Joffrey, yeah, right. He's just like, well, this is all mine, and so I bear no responsibility. I didn't build it. Anyway, Burger Priest is a phenomenon. It looks pretty good. The burgers are undelievable, and they're closely associated with New Testament scripture. Okay. The priest is not ironic. Oh, so it's a spiritual burden of a theming? Okay, okay. Their tagline is redeeming the burger one at a time. So it's all very religious language anyway. The franchise was like an instant hit in the city of Toronto, so much so that it has now sold to Harvey's, which if you don't know, Harvey's is the sister restaurant to Swiss Chalet. So these two mega restaurants. It's about to fall off a cliff. Who knows? I don't mean to discourage them. Harvey's been around forever and it's delicious. Okay. I'll go next to them there. But Toronto is, you want to think of it like as a super mini New York, in that there's like 50 different places doing their own special burgers, a place called Rudy's. There's, for a long time, Matty Matheson had a burger place called P&L. I went there. I went there. I went to P&L. P&L Burger. Now Matty's got his own burger place right just south of Trinity Bellwoods Park. I forget. Happy Burger? No, Matty's Patty's. That's where I went. That's where I went. Those are great. Those are good. But Happy Burger is also great. Like, you come to Toronto looking for a hamburger, you could eat a different burger every single day and be happy. But we don't have like Hamburger America. We don't have the kind of stuff you have. But we didn't have that until very early. Hamburger America felt like it was very much filling a hole. The problem with that is it opened right by my office and I cannot, I have to like not go that out. I could kill myself. That's only a problem of perception and you're mine. I've never been in my life I want to go so badly. I may even go right after this. I recommend it. Yeah. It's easy to get there. I'll tell you what train to take. Anyway, on the subject of burgers, it's completely right. Yeah. Toronto's a great hamburger city. It's a great, great food city. Yeah. I mean, the first time I went to Toronto, I'm from New York. I grew up in London. I was like, these two cities have been merged into one city for me, is how I felt about Toronto. I was like, it's sort of a New York-y city with more of an English energy. Queen on the money. Like, I know it's neither, really. You want your money to have the types of people on it that are separated from you by dint of birth. Because in America... What birth canal they exited? It makes a big difference because here in America, you see a bill and you're like, oh man, if I work really hard, I could get on this bill. Which is true. In Canada, it's not... No, I'm sorry. It's not possible. Are there nice Canadians on the backs of the bill or whatever? Yeah, they put some inventors on there, but there are a precious few of those. I think John A. McDonald is a little bit, has a colored history, doesn't he? My point is that, you're talking about our prime ministers. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, they put our prime ministers on the bill, but on the back of all of them is the queen. You've always got the, well, now the king. Or is he not? All of it? Used to be, but, and all the coins. The queen was on the back of every single one. Now, I think. Yeah, you switch into Charlie. No, I think that our country's done all kinds of bizarre things. They switched to a polymer bill, first of all. Of course. And now it's all like Monopoly money. Yeah, I think Uncle Pennybags is on the back now, right? Which would be great. I mean, I think he equals money. He's good at business. He understands how to run a country like a business. So does the way the game work is that you're buying the properties from him? No, I don't actually know what role to play. Okay, but wait a second. Maybe he owns the bank. Maybe you're all just dealing with his money. I've never considered this. It certainly feels like he owns the bank, but I also feel like you're buying the properties from him. It's funny because that is bad strategy. He owns the board. He could just hotel up everything. He has the last last. Exactly. That's the point. You never get to the end of Monopoly, and if you do, no one's happy. You're playing in a world that this guy has already monopolized. And he's like, have your fucking fun. Try your best. Just try, but it's all coming back to me. They're making a big Monopoly movie right now. Thank God. Like a big, big, big one. Well, these questions are going to get answered. Who would be good casting for them? For Rich Uncle Pennybags? Chris Pratt. I do. Throw him in there. I used to do, I forget who the advertiser was, who the sponsor was, but it was some online banking company that I'm sure is super reputable and still in business, but I would do ad reads for them as Rich Uncle Pennybags. Moneybags? Pennybags? Moneybags? Pennybags is the name. And then the bit became that he had been canceled and got replaced with Christopher Plummer. so in my mind I'm like Christopher Plummer would have been the great prestige uncle Pennybags but now he's dead we lost our chance Anthony Hopkins wow starring Kevin Hart the movie centers on a boy from Baltic Avenue on a quest to make a fortune this is the Monopoly movie and Bella Tarr is directing it Belly's dead just died well he rapped and then he it's an I'd like song people are going to question like was this his cut? And it's a tight Rondondo Minutes. Yeah, it's like many Bellator films. He really wanted to go commercial. He wanted to make something his kids could see. And as always, I think the ultimate takeaway is Die My Love's box office failure was due to a lack of Oakberry tie-in. Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hosley. Our creative producer is Marie Barty Salinas. And our associate producer is AJ McKeon. This show is mixed and edited by A.J. McKeon and Alan Smithy. Research by J.J. Birch. Our theme song is by Lane Montgomery in the Great American Novel, with additional music by Alex Mitchell. Artwork by Joe Bowen, Ollie Moss, and Pat Reynolds. Our production assistant is Minnick. Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson for their production help. Head over to BlankCheckPod.com for links to all the real nerdy shit. Join our Patreon, Blank Check Special Features, for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us on social at Blank Check Pod. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Checkbook, on Substack. This podcast is created and produced by Blank Check Productions.