Reel Confessions: Sarah Marshall

Hey everybody, one of my favorite podcasts, Talking Pictures, is back for another season. You know this. It's from TCM and HBO Max. It's a podcast all about movies and memories hosted by Ben Manquitz and he gets to sit down with some of Hollywood's most influential actors and filmmakers to discuss the movies that inspired him. I've been on the show. It was the most fun and this season he is talking to people like Edgar Wright about pacing and montages in film and Rosie Perez about her acting career and how it kind of just began on accident. He's also talking to Pat Nozwald, Susan Sarandon, Hiramurai, who is a director who did a lot of Atlanta and the great new show Widows Bay, Sally Field, Tony Goldwyn and so much more. This season Ben and his guests are on camera so you can also watch Talking Pictures on HBO Max and Spotify or listen wherever you get your podcast. This spring on Disney Plus, 18 Plus, subscription required. T's and C's apply. Welcome to UnSpoiled's Real Confessions, the show where we dim the lights and we ask our guests to bear their cinematic souls. That's right Amy, we're not hitting them with trivia. No, we are talking about the movies that they love, the ones that they hate, the films that they're embarrassed to admit that they own and the reasons that you might not want to sit next to them in a dark theater. Or maybe you do want to sit next to them because today's the beginning of the confessional, we have Sarah Marshall. Oh my gosh, I love Sarah. If you've not listened to her podcast, you're wrong about yet on that. As a matter of fact, Amy and I are going to be on that show and let me tell you, it's one of those podcasts. It makes you smarter. It really just does. And by the way, I should tease what we're going to be on the podcast about is Ishtar, a movie I've wanted to talk about with Paul forever. And we really went deep into Ishtar. You can also listen to her on the recently released CBC podcast series, The Devil You Know. So without any further ado, Sarah, please enter the confession. Sarah, I think it's fair to say that wrongness is your business. Wrongness is what's right to you. So I want to start right off the bat by asking you, what is a historical movie that gets everything wrong, but you as the queen of wrongness, give it a pass? Oh, that makes me happy as a question. Thank you for having me first of all. Let's see. Well, I mean, the most obvious answer is Newsy's, which I think strives to be historically accurate to a point and has like kind of a surprising amount of actual information about the real newsboy strike of 1899 and then completely changes the ending in order to make it a great triumphant story where also Teddy Roosevelt shows up at the end and fixes everything, which he would not have and didn't. But to sort of give it that Disney type ending where you stand up for what's right and it's an unmitigated success in the last reel as opposed to a morally troubling compromise in which the bosses in question also were able to get some of the strikers to turn scab as happens sometimes in life. But also it's not so family friendly that all the kids aren't smoking the whole time, which I guess is accurate. Newsy's is my favorite movie that I will always defend no matter what it has done wrong. Wow, sir. I actually have to confess something to you, which is I love Newsy's as a kid. It didn't ever even occurred to me to think of it as a real story with any political message. I was just focused on which boy was the hottest boy. But who was it? Who was it? I mean, that's extremely important and political as well. It was crunchy because he's got personality. Well, I think that like musicals have this ability to escape any requirement to be real. Right? Once you break into song, everything can go by the wayside. We talked about this, you know, with Greece, like the idea of what we know of the fifties is very much, I think, to a lot of people viewed by how they see Greece. But it's like, oh, well, that was a that's not entirely true. Like we it's the once it goes to a musical world, you get a chance to reinvent history. Make it cleaner, make it more fun, make it more dramatic, make a lot of plot advance in three minutes while people are singing the whole time, which is ideal. Oh, yeah. We recently got into this because we did an episode on dead poet society and realized in our research of it that the dead poet society wasn't what Disney wanted. Disney wanted something more in the Newsy's vein. And that is how swing kids existed. Swing kids was the movie Disney wanted that they didn't get out of that. So they're like, we want Nazis and we want Robert Sean Leonard to make it happen. I mean, fair. It's also funny because when I was growing up, I was like very in the Newsy's fan fiction world and there was a real sense of like Newsy's dead poet society and swing kids being this trio. And the fact that there was some kind of like behind the scenes agreement that these movies were all related is very and of course, there's like the Robert Sean Leonard Christian Bale kind of like connected to you. That's very pleasing to me. It is. I mean, I was very much a Robert Sean Leonard girl. And to this day, I think I'm a little reluctant to ever get fully on board with Christian Bale because I took a side back in the 90s. Yeah. And also Robert Sean Leonard was so pretty. He was. I mean, now, just because at this time, I was not interested in young hot boys. Newsy's did not jump onto my radar as much as a lot of other friends of mine. And I would say that my knowledge of Newsy's was that it was uniquely bad. Right. That was like the that was at least the way that it was fed to me. Like Newsy's is a bad movie. But now it's really had this like cultural reawakening from a Broadway musical. But even to hear you two tell of it, it might just not have been for me. Well, that's a fascinating thing is I think when there's a phenomenon that rises up that is specifically teen girl coded, it gets deemed bad in the larger whole. It just gets deemed bad automatically. And also it was yanked from theaters very quickly. So it feels like that kind of thing of Disney being like, no, we miscalculated. Don't look at us. There you go. It's into that news boy behind the mirror. I mean, and by the way, it is also like, I mean, it is what Disney making a pro union movie, but but it is like one of those things where it is out of the box for Disney, right? Like to make this like it doesn't feel like even in the best sense, like, how do you get people to this period of time with these like it's a it's a hard movie to sell, I guess is what I'm saying. Like, so it can't be blamed on some of it has to be the advertising. You know, people did not be like, you know how kids are just crazy about media set 93 years ago? It would be like, no, they're not. What are you saying to me? I mean, when you look at these numbers, it is crazy. The movie cost 15 million and made 2.8. You know, it was not, you know, one of the lowest grossing live action films for Disney ever. And that's kind of special. I do think so. I do, I do, I do. I mean, clearly it has it's got a revisionist history. Now, there might have been a lot of people who walked out of New Seas. If I saw it, I would not have walked out of it. It's quite long. It's far too long. Yeah, I will say that. Have you ever done that? Walked out of a film? Oh, yeah, I have walked out of Troy because I remember going to see it in high school, having been forced to read the Iliad in ninth grade. And so my friends and I left early because it was too inaccurate, we felt, actually speaking of the film request. And also I remember once, it was just very memorable. The first time actually that I ever consumed pot brownies, the sort of, you know, the original edible, I wandered into a movie theater in downtown Portland, what's up Fox Tower and wandered into the movie Babel or Babel. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is a great movie to see while you're way too high. And then also into notes on a scandal after a while, which is not. And it was like, and then I went, wandered away and ran into my old high school science teacher, but that was a very powerful experience with cinema. And I've just sort of like, and this is like one of those movie theaters where like you buy a ticket and then there's a sort of complex of corridors. So you can kind of just like dabble around and kind of graveyard a movie together. Have you guys ever done that? I love that. And I recently was seeing a screening and it was a later screening. I was like, oh, you know what? I'm here and I can just kind of pop in. And I guess my screening was like one of the last of the night. So every theater I walked into, the credits were rolling. Or nothing was going on. And I was like, oh my God. I was like, I long for those days where you just kind of hang out in a movie theater, like a rainy day or just like a summer day to get in from the hot heat. You know, I'd love that just sitting there. I saw so many films I would never have seen like Robert Altman's Lake Wobagon days. I'm like, well, watch it. It's long and I'm hot. No, I want to ask this, Sarah, when you're at the movie theater and there's somebody in there with their phone off, are you the person who will tell them to turn their phone off or are you the person who sits there and hopes somebody else does it? I always sit there and hope somebody else does it. But the problem with the Pacific Northwest is that we're all very passive aggressive people. So we all think that by, which maybe goes with like our culture of like witchcraft because like rather than directly just like asking someone to do something, we'll all sit there coughing and thinking malevolent thoughts until we can force them to do it mentally. I actually believe in which power I like very much. Sometimes it works. You know, you know, there's this, the etiquette of theaters have gotten like really interesting because, you know, I once was yelled at for laughing too much in a movie. And I was helping video. It's put together their 40th anniversary night. And two of the comments that I came across on their Yelp page were from people who were mad that there was too much laughing. They couldn't hear the screen. And I was like, what a, what a miserable person you have to be to be like, Hey, this communal experience, you're, you're, you're distracting me. What Paul is leaving out is that it was Schindler's list. Well, yes. But I do think it's an interesting thing. Like we're so used to being at home. Like I, I think one of the best experiences I ever had was seeing, um, oh, I'm forgetting the name of the film, but the John Krasinski film where, uh, where it's, you have to be quiet. Yeah. For the aliens. Oh yeah. Yeah. It's a quiet place. Um, you know, that idea of being in a theater and, and being around that many people and it being that quiet was amazing. And then, you know, if someone messes it up, it does take you out. Like it's like, oh, you didn't agree to this thing that we've all agreed to, that we all are now in this zone. You know, it, I understand it from that, but if it's a comedy, let the people laugh. Let us laugh. Well, also, I mean, I saw Titanic recently at, um, Portland's Hollywood theater, which is an amazing theater. And there was a woman fairly near me who was just like full on sobbing during the last half hour. And like, that's an appropriate response to Titanic. You know, if you see a movie with a bunch of people, like, yeah, there's some just kind of anti-social behavior that you don't want and don't be taking calls or anything, but it's kind of, it is, especially after what we've been through, it's nice to really know that there are people around you and that they're crying. Yeah. I heard of people breaking into tears at the materialists, which was a movie that I could not stand. I was like fascinated by whatever was happening inside of people's bodies that they're having that kind of reaction. I go back to that Roger Ebert quote that movies are empathy machines and the idea that, you know, whatever you are going through, this movie allows you to break down. I never understood that idea of like crying at like a, you know, commercial for like a phone carrier, like back when I was growing up, it was always like, you know, a dad and a daughter on the phone and everyone's like, oh, it made me cry. I was like, I didn't get that. And then I had a kid and I'm like, oh, I cry at so many commercial, I cry. I was balling with that movie, Wild Robot. It killed, it crushed me. I came home and I said to my wife, I was like, whatever you do, don't watch that movie. You can't handle it. You will not be able to handle these. And protecting her from the movie. Hey, everyone, I'm Josh Radner. And I am so excited to tell you about how we made your mother a rewatch podcast looking back at how I met your mother. And I'm here with Craig Thomas, who co-created the show along with Carter Bay's. Hi, Craig. Hey, Josh, somehow it has been 20 years since the show premiered. That's, I'm going to check the math on that 10 years since it went off the air. And we thought that made this a perfect time to look back, see what the hell we did and why the show still seems to resonate with fans around the world today. Follow and listen to how we made your mother wherever you get your podcasts. The war is over and both sides lost. Kingdoms were reduced to cinders and armies scattered like bones in the dust. Now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world. Praying the darkness chooses someone else tonight. But in the shadow dark, the darkness always wins. This is old school adventuring at its most cruel. Your torch ticks down in real time. And when that flame dies, something else rises to finish the job. This is a brutal rules light nightmare with a story that emerges organically based on the decisions that the characters make. This is what it felt like to play RPGs in the 80s. And man, it is so good to be back. Join the Glass Cannon podcast as we plunge into the shadow dark every Thursday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on youtube.com slash the glass cannon with the podcast version dropping the next day. See what everybody's talking about and join us in the dark. From the parents behind law and order comes a mystery the whole family can enjoy. Patrick Picklebottom, Everyday Mysteries. Step into the whimsical world of Patrick Picklebottom, a precocious 11 year old with a love for reading and an uncanny ability to solve mysteries. Inspired by the beloved children's book of the same name, this podcast vividly brings Patrick's tales of deduction and everyday adventures to life as he unravels baffling indigmas and solves clever cases. Patrick Picklebottom, Everyday Mysteries is perfect for kids and is just as entertaining for grown-ups who love a good mystery. The whole family can listen now wherever you get your podcasts. But you know talking about like weird audiences, is there like a movie fandom that you find yourself you know either wanting to get more in or push away from because you know there are some there are some you know tricky fandoms out there. Yeah you know I really like the horror fandom and I know that every fandom gets weird but I feel like I identify most deeply as a horror fan and I feel like you always have a home there where it's just like I feel like in horror fandom it's like being into like antiquing or being like some kind of a collector where you will frequently watch an entire movie that you only liked five minutes of and you won't feel that it was a waste of your time and you get to recommend it in the spirit of okay it's kind of trash but there's this one five-minute sequence that's amazing you know where it's got like a great cameo by this one person and I love that sort of it feels like a very generous way of engaging with media because you're thinking about it not as whether it pleases you or not but in terms of what it feels like to think of it as a piece of a much bigger picture and you know that that whole big picture you love so it feels like you're willing to just take a rest. I think that's a great answer because if I was going to say the two fandoms that people might have reversed in their heads it's that the horror fan community is actually really great and supportive and loving and fun and very positive and the YA fan community is so toxic and it's fascinating you would guess that that would be reversed but absolutely not. Well you know what I think is interesting about horror movie fans is you are going on a roller coaster ride like from the moment that movie starts the lap bar is down and you're on the ride and you are willing to go on that ride and at the end you're like oh that had some good scares that had some whatever I was down for it but I feel like other fandoms are owed things it's like well I want to dictate how this is but I think that horror fans will see anything they don't really have an allegiance like great if you're a new first time director you are on equal footing as a horror legend and I think that's why that's why so many people come up in genre because it allows you to kind of show off your your skills like whatever you want to be like they're gonna accept you if it's good it's good yeah yeah I just love that. I do too it's really really fun and I love watching horror movies with people who are not too cool for school I want the screams I saw a midnight screening of us in New York on opening night and it was raucous it was the best like that's that again talking about like in theater experience like I want people to yell I want people I think that that it's a good relief it's like going through a haunted house which I also really really love. Yep yeah we need more yelling. Are you that person have you ever have you ever yelled in a theater? Well I did definitely yell at a midnight release this was like I think opening night of Twilight Eclipse but in the context of a trivia contest where I won't I still have somewhere a little Edward Cullen action figure because the question was where are the Volturi and a better answer would be like what part of Italy there in which I forgot at this point but I said Italy and the people who were running this trivia who didn't care that much we're like yeah it's fine and checked it at me and I can't he has a little pico. Oh I thought you were gonna say you yelled at the part where Jacob takes off his shirt which is totally fine but you probably was yelling then too yelling at Twilight is one of the great millennial activities. It is I think the most fun I ever had was seeing Breaking Dawn part two in a theater because you know the battle scene the battle scene I'll just leave it a battle scene if people haven't seen it yet. My poor seatmate Justin Chang from Kodak of the New Yorker I was punching him in the thigh over and over again because I was so excited about what was happening on screen I was screaming I was it's still top 10 theatrical experience pusting punching Justin Chang. Yeah you gotta prank somebody. Alright let's talk about snacks getting to the real nitty gritty here are you a butter on popcorn person what you know what is your go-to snack order when you are sitting down. Yeah this is an important area I'm gonna plug Portland's Hollywood theater again where you can get junior mince and you can get them at room temperature or chilled. So you gotta get the chilled junior mince and then you distribute them evenly throughout your popcorn which is buttered of course. Well do you see this is really interesting because we do the M&Ms in the popcorn but the junior mince chilled I've never thought about the mint and the popcorn kind of mixing like that. Yeah it's a flavor experience but yeah I gotta do M&Ms in popcorn because I feel like something sweet in your popcorn is so satisfying and I think it enables you to just like keep eating more because if you're eating just popcorn at a certain point you're like my mouth hurts. Exactly. But if you can balance it it's like trail mix. I mean that's why I'm fascinated by I mean for many reasons but I'm fascinated by Tom Cruise and this embracing of popcorn that he has taken. Yeah he's like I gotta change the narrative on what people know me for. I do think it's a very funny idea to be like I brought back movies and the guy who brought back movies obviously his favorite food would be a movie food. It's not even like Twizzlers it's like popcorn like everybody that's the one universal and but he says things like oh I you know just eat us tons of popcorn and he for the post that he made of the Running Man premiere was a great movie had lots of popcorn like multiple buckets of popcorn and I'm like that's too much popcorn. It's too much popcorn. I mean it's gonna be bad for your intestines. This is not a good it's not good. It's not good just plain like that. I have to stick up for raisinets and popcorn. Oh raisinets are great. Ultimate combination. I also speaking of like random movie memories when I was growing up this will resonate with like a certain type of homeschool adjacent person. We had like the actual Disney Peter Pan but we also had the Mary Martin live action Peter Pan from the 60s which we would watch sometimes because of my mom grew up with it and it had a raisinx commercial at the beginning and I think I always felt subconsciously that like raisinets I love raisinets but the raisinets were to candy as the Mary Martin Peter Pan was to kids movies. It's like technically but you know don't show it to your friends. Right the carob or the the toothbrush in your Halloween bucket. I mean they are really good but it's just like you know you're like revealing yourself as a certain kind of person by being like this is the candy I brought. It has raisins in it. You know what I feel like it's what I really want to do and I feel like theaters need to get more on board with the idea of give me a bag that I will pay for by weight and I can mix some candies in there because that's I know the certain bespoke theaters might do that. Like I don't know if I want to I'm not going to enjoy a whole thing of sour patch watermelons but I would like to have a handful of them like you know and and kind of move it around a little bit. Yeah and they could make a killing because nobody can guesstimate weight or you know the people who can still are dating someone who can't and I remember doing that with candy at a movie theater in Australia where I was seeing Mel Gibson's The Patriot for whatever that's worth so with this it's been done we can do it here. I wanted to ask you about you did an episode about Santa Claus right. Yeah and actually we just recorded another one earlier today if you can believe it. Yeah so your finger is right on the Santa pulse. Well like what what do movies get right and wrong about Santa because there's so many. I like how you're saying that like I know him. But you know it's like like certain movies really work like certain movies become these Christmas staples and I was wondering you know in your looking at Santa Claus and the way that Santa Claus has come across in culture like maybe what are the things that work or that we like and we want to see more of or that we revolt against because I'm you know I don't know if you this is a harder question but I want to say. I think my recall on 34th street you know generally works you want like a nice soft spoken Santa who doesn't make too big of a deal out of things and who's like I'm not going to confirm or deny anything but yes I'm totally Santa. I was thinking earlier while talking about you know doing recording a Cold War Santa episode specifically that Santa Claus conquers the Martians as seen as kind of a classically bad movie. Oh yeah. And it's like it's extremely watchable. Oh please stump for this like what why should we this holiday season watch Santa Claus and the Martians. It's just like it's that that iconic type of bad movie where you're like I could never have come up with this but I feel I feel like it speaks well of human beings that like people were creative enough to take things in this direction because basically it's like you know the Martians I think kidnapped Santa because they need to to bring morale to themselves and it feel you know and you could like get deep about it and read it like invasion of the body snatchers and say that it's kind of like maybe it's a metaphor for the Cold War but it's also just like it's just fun they're clearly they're they're having fun and I guess we'll watch anyone do that. I feel like there's a lot of just kind of low effort Christmas movies a lot of low effort Santa movies but anything in the in the spirit of like really committing to the fact that we're all here to make a movie about Santa like I will watch any of those. I am so glad you just stumped for Santa Claus Conkers the Martians that that was our family's Christmas movie. That's amazing. Yeah very much my dad always made fun of Pia Zadora love to make fun of Pia Zadora that for some reason Pia Zadora is a celebrity that was very large in my head because of my dad teasing her all the time. She's the ish star of celebrities really. Ish star of celebrities but this movie Santa Claus Conkers and Martians might have one of the most banger Santa Claus Christmas songs of all time. Can you sing it? I can't but what do you like too? Wow I love that you. I can hum it for you if you I can hum it if you need it. You want to refresh her. Yeah but you know I'm not I've only seen it a couple times so I'm not but like if I could I would be shameless about jumping in don't worry. Okay yeah. Okay let's do it together. All right one more time. One two three. Perfect. Fix it in post. Oh my god I love every moment of that. Here's what I will say and I feel like I keep on referencing my children and I apologize to do that because I don't pay attention to him normally. No is every Santa Claus movie that's coming out recently tries to address the fact that you probably don't believe in Santa Claus and it's driving me nuts. I'm like you know what can we just like we don't need to come up with a reason or why he comes into an apartment building differently. I just I don't we don't need the logic and I feel like there are movies and TV shows the Santa Claus reboot the Tim Allen Santa Claus the you know that struggles so hard to justify something and they actually have spoiled Santa Claus in many ways for my kids because they're like what do you mean people don't think he exists. Guys no hold on wait you know it's like they're pulling the like just allow it to happen like we're not looking forward to being oh that's clever that's how Santa Claus actually does it's like we're not you're not it's a movie about Santa Claus just embrace that like but it's such a very bizarre like meadow thing and I think it speaks to the Hollywood noting of movies is like well but we do have to we do have to justify how he does do it all in one day. Yes that's a machine right he's a saint he can it's you know it's it's magic yes say it's magic and move on. I am a hundred percent in agreement. All right so Amy you want to ask our final. My final question is this is it okay for history teachers to use movies to teach history. I think so and I mean as we were kind of talking about before or you know quoting Roger Ebert saying movies are empathy machines I think that that is true and I think that there are even in movies that I watched that didn't teach me the thing they were supposed to teach me like the movies we watched in French class la boom obviously the the memories that you form during school age times are potentially so vivid and can kind of shape you in amazing ways and so I feel like you know and also if you're a teacher like sometimes you're hungover it's nice to be able to not try as hard for a while it's good for everybody right. I got so much extra credit for being able to bring in Clash of the Titans now technically not history but Greek mythology you know like but it was I do think that kids will learn a little bit more and they if you can get if you could hook them in I mean I think that that's maybe what Hamilton did culturally to so many people right like I and going back to the beginning it's sort of like you it's important I think to take something that might be a little bit dry in a classroom setting and and give it a you know some life I feel like I don't know as a kid movie days were the biggest and best days of the year. Yeah and I mean I I feel like I try and do this in a way on on my own show where I kind of if we're trying to or if I'm you know talking to somebody about coming out to talk about a topic I always try and steer it in the direction of is there a kind of a person or a character like a real human being but somebody who kind of whose life we can see history changing through or can kind of track through this bigger story that we're telling because I feel like as much as we want to have brains that assimilate information and can kind of objectively come up with the most important truth a lot of us aren't like that and we need a little bit of sauce you know and I just the thing of having characters who are rendered at least faithfully enough that you can use that as a jumping off point to learn the more complicated historical truth I think we need that. Well Sarah we're going to close out with what we call the cinema repentance booth where I'm going to ask you what in the world of cinema the entire world of cinema would you like to formally make amends with today? Hmm I mean I think like any movie that I've assumed wasn't good without actually seeing it because sometimes you're right but sometimes you're really wrong and also just with the way that you know a lot of movies are promoted something that they're really not or get kind of becomes synonymous with a moment that they may not represent that well and I'm thinking of you know my beloved movie Saw becoming kind of known as the Torch Your Porn movie when in fact it's all the sequels that are Torch Your Porn and Saw is mostly just about you know it's just like it's just it's just Beckett you know it's just basically Beckett. Wait did you just say that Saw is Beckett? Yeah it's kind of waiting for Goddell it's just waiting for Jake Saw you know. Waiting for Gordo can I say that? I also saw a very lovely couple's costume where a couple dressed up as Adam and Lawrence in Saw and it was very cute and great yeah a couple of the year. I often believe that you know it's the imitators that get it wrong right like it's you know there's a you know everybody wanted to make die hard on a blank but die hard you know is great because it was a singular idea and then it gets wonky it's a photocopy of a photocopy and I agree with you I stayed away from Saw then I saw it and I was like this is great it's it's a and then when you saw Saw I saw Saw and then I said I saw I saw seen it done but uh but that like there is there it's just a great again indie like or it can feel like an indie it's a small idea really beautifully executed yeah and um and I do think that like that's where horror thrives again uh but also don't be afraid of the originals the originals sometimes they got the goods they got the goods. Well and speaking of die hard it's a fact that I love because I love directors commentaries and it's a you know a shame that now that we're kind of past the age of the DVD we don't really have those as accessible anymore because it was really a time when I think I learned a lot about movies and storytelling by listening to those but in the commentary for die hard the director what's so interesting is that everyone tried to emulate die hard for so many years you know we had like die hard on a mountain and die hard in a bus and whatever to uh lesser or greater success but the director of die hard in the commentary says you know the idea of die hard is that it's like a mid-summer night stream and it's this night when the princes become asses and the asses become princes and then everyone ends up where they're supposed to be so everyone who is trying to imitate die hard was imitating a movie that was imitating shakespeare so just do your own thing. Okay my mind is now yep I I wow you just shook me to my commentary it's so fun. Okay I am the mission uh accepted. Well Sarah I want to say thank you so much for for joining us in our cinema confessional I do have appendance for you. Oh good okay. To make up for your I would say very light movie since I've really appreciated how much you stick up for movies getting to play around a little bit with history so what I want from you to make your beautiful immense with the world as as a as a penance is to give me a pitch I want you to tell me a story that you think more people should know from history and then give me the star you think would help make people see it in classrooms across the world high or not when they stumble into movie theaters to go in and see the real deal. Oh boy it's not good that my first thought is the radium girls which is you know the subject of a great book and oh yeah for people who don't know is I also have a originally a french graphic novel about it that's really beautiful but you know it's basically the story of um you know some of the many casualties of just American industry moving fast and loose and thinking about safety last and essentially you know typically young women who are kind of having their first jobs and whose job it was to paint glow-in-the-dark clock faces and things like that and who were encouraged to just sharpen their paint brushes into points with their mouths um just to be more efficient that way I guess and shave off a few seconds and what turned out to happen is that the glow-in-the-dark paint they were using contained radium which had absolutely disastrous effects for their health and essentially turned their bones to dust not exactly but you know pretty much um and so I think that that would be a could be obviously extremely depressing but also and very scary to walk into if you had eaten too many edibles but also it could be a really beautiful film about kind of this moment in time also when you know industry is extremely dangerous and doesn't care how many workers it destroys but also when um people and at this time young girls are becoming wage earners for their families for the first time and are leaving home and leaving different religious and cultural uh backgrounds and ending up at the same workplace and becoming friends with each other and sharing intimacy that wasn't available to them before and I would cast in it I cannot think of a single young actor that I know and so therefore I would cast David Strathair and to do something evil and that's my idea by the way I love this and that is uh more more Strathair yeah after I rewatched sneakers I was like he's so good uh always so good that's a great pic that's a great story and I I have to say if you want to hear a version of that story told from the Marie Curie side of it her angle into it there's a really great one that didn't get a huge release a couple years ago by Marjane Satrapi she did a Persepolis and it stars Rosamund Pike as Marie Curie and it becomes really dreamlike and surreal towards the end as we wait for people to grab David and get your movie made I really think you'd love Radioactive that sounds amazing and I they had better not play any Imagine Dragons during that movie or imagine you sit through an entire very serious movie you're devastated and then they just like drop that and the end credits I would simply die of radium eventually all right we want to thank Sarah Marshall one more time for joining us on Real Confessions is absolutely the best and do not forget you can get your wrong about and the devil you know her two podcast whoever you get your podcast and if you have a guest you want to hear confess their deepest darkest cinema sins let us know hit us up on social tell us on the sub stack whatever we want to hear from you all right Amy until next time the confession is closed unspooled is produced by Amy Nicholson Paul Shear molly reynolds and harry nelson sound engineered by Cory Barton music by Devin Bryant episode art by Kim Troxell show art by Lee Jameson and social media production by zoe applebaum this is a realm production see you next week bye for now there are vampires out there they walk among you shoulder to shoulder in the dark heading to work heading home going to the bar it's a life just like anyone else's and I have grown used to it to the darkness to the moon to the taste of blood on my tongue but vampires are dying out we are a fading kind and I am the first one created in so long and that is a dangerous thing to be those who came before me elders of all stripes they do not want to see our kind gone and they will do anything to keep their power and for myself and for grace who created me that is a sword that hangs above our heads and the worst person of all carries our secret and he will use it however he sees fit who do you look to when things are at their darkest from the creators of Park del haunt comes with by a podcast about monsters dreams and changes those you want and those you never saw coming season two arise at ember 24th distributed by realm life moves too fast scrolling swiping headlines sound bites nobody's really seen even the people everyone thinks they know I'm Evelyn I'm a television producer and director and I've spent decades behind the camera creating shows with people everyone knows on the podcast reppin I sit down with actors creators and change makers to hear their full story the risks they took the moments everything almost fell apart and the lessons they live by these are real conversations no headlines and no sound bites just stories that show the human behind the success and gives you insights you can actually use in your own life every conversation is jammed packed with inspiration and practical lessons reppin is about courage it's about grit it's about being human first listen to reppin wherever you get your podcasts