28 Days Later with David Rees

[00:00:01] Blank Check with Griffin and David, Blank Check with Griffin and David Don't know what to say or to expect All you need to know is that the name of the show is Blank Check Since it began, who have you podcasted?

[00:00:24] You wouldn't be alive now if you hadn't podcasted somebody. I'm really struggling with the accents this series. That's fine! No, that was good. That was fine. That was good. What's the word being substituted there? Killed. Killed. Murdered. Very similar, almost the same word, killed and podcasted. Right.

[00:00:45] The two worst things you can do to somebody, murder them or podcast them. I think that's the Sixth Amendment. Yeah. Thou shalt not podcast. Right. Yeah, exactly. Sixth Amendment? What am I saying? Sixth Commandment! Jesus Christ! I answered the right thing with you saying the wrong thing.

[00:01:01] And then I thought I had done the wrong thing because you had said the wrong thing. Oh my God, that was me. That was all me. Killer start. Killer, killer start. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hi. Hi. This is Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David.

[00:01:16] It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers and then are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. And sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce, baby.

[00:01:30] Sometimes they get infected. Sometimes the checks get infected. With rage. Yes! Sometimes the checks are enraged. The ultimate virus. This is a miniseries on the films of Danny Boyle. Oh, Danny Boyle, the pipes the pipes are calling. It is called Trainspotcasting? That's right.

[00:01:49] Today we're talking about his comeback film. Yeah, without a doubt. The distinct beginning of his second phase as a filmmaker. It's called 28 Days Later. Dot dot dot. Yeah, although it's not referred to... There's no dot dot dot on like the IMDb. But it is on screen.

[00:02:13] If you're going by the Mike D'Angelo rules of whatever the title is on screen, that is the title. Well, I think this is an important thing to ask because is this the second dot dot dot movie we've covered or not? I don't know.

[00:02:27] Our guest should weigh in, I think. I'm not sure how you feel about the ellipsis in a title. Do you think the title is what's on the poster or what is on screen? What's on the poster? Yeah, I'm with you.

[00:02:42] Because no offense to Mike D'Angelo, but he'll do that thing where he won't call the Irishman the Irishman. He calls it like, I heard you paint houses. Because the title of the Irishman never appears on screen. And sometimes I'm sort of like, look, don't be a stickler.

[00:02:57] It's okay. Your classic Ghostbusters Answer the Call. A title that only appears on screen or Shane Black's Iron Man 3, T-H-R-E-E. Spelled out, right? Right. David is taking off his sweatshirt to show off his t-shirt. And David, what's on your t-shirt there? This is from 2016, right?

[00:03:21] This is the original, right? A much better time. Well, it was actually a pretty stressful time. Ghostbusters Answer the Call was in theaters. Everyone was chill about it. And this is from our guests podcast, Election Profit Makers, which in 2016 was sort of a limited podcast.

[00:03:39] You know, if you remember, I mean, you know. I do remember. This was kind of our reward at the end of it. You know, we had unfortunately gotten Donald Trump, but we did get a cool t-shirt about wave riding. That's right. Yeah. Anyway, that's what I'm wearing today.

[00:03:54] It's warm. It's toasty. Pretty nice in New York today. So I don't need a sweater. Well, that's a bit of a humble brag. David Reese, thank you for coming back to the show. Yeah, thanks for having me. It's nice to be back. Your third appearance.

[00:04:08] It's nice to have you. First two appearances, AI spirited away. Two of our favorite movies ever covered on the show. That's good. Yeah, they're both really good movies, really interesting movies. And I feel like for many people to have their favorite episodes.

[00:04:25] I hear them cited so often you were very selective every time we've asked you to do the show. You basically throw out a movie and say if you ever cover this, I'll do it. Really? It makes me sound like such as such an asshole. Sorry.

[00:04:39] You're not an asshole. You're you're you're you're special. I'm just my fear is that if it's if it's not a movie that I don't have some kind of investment and I just won't have anything to say about it. Like you don't feel strongly about Clifford.

[00:04:54] Clifford the big red dog. What? Oh, no. Whoa. It's the one that Tom Sharpling is obsessed with where a boy is a man or someone. Yeah, I've never seen it. I don't know it. Okay, Ben Hosley also obsessed with it. Okay. Yeah, that's pretty fucked up.

[00:05:10] You need to watch. Is it that a grown man is a boy or that a grown man thinks he's a boy? I mean is a boy being there. Yeah, a boy is being played by a man, but there's no acknowledgement of it.

[00:05:22] Like it's purely a theatrical conceits within the text of the film itself. He is a normal boy except is he all that normal and some ways you could say he's possessed or is like a zombie if you will to to to he's infected dinosaur land, right?

[00:05:40] But it's not like big where the plot of big is. No, there's a boy running wild in this man's body. No, there's nothing in the plot that explains why he is played by a man in his 40s. Oh, that is kind of wild. It's a strange.

[00:05:54] I think you would find it unsettling. I'm not sure. I don't know where you fall on Martin short generally. I don't know. I haven't seen him in that many things. Actually.

[00:06:03] I liked what I saw of only murders in the building, but I don't know if I've ever seen him in a movie. It's kind of like freebasing Martin short. Like it's like the most it's the most unconstrained.

[00:06:15] He is pure and that's that's that's that's good in a way your last. Wow, this guy is totally, you know doing what he wants to do. But in another way, you're like, well, maybe sometimes people need guardrails and those things are okay.

[00:06:27] Is he the one who had put his hair up in a huge point and then squirm around in an armchair? I think you're combining two things. Martin short characters. I'm timing click squirms around in an armchair and then Ed Grimley. Yeah, I'm thinking of Ed Grimley.

[00:06:41] Is that Martin short? Yes, and didn't he have a hair point like a unicorn point? No, no, that was the hair point. Yes and tucked in shirt high-waisted pants the squirming around in the armchair. And I feel that's more Jiminy click. Okay, click.

[00:06:54] Yes, you know, how do you describe him? Moron imbecile, you know celebrity interviewer care got it. Okay, but no, I the thing is we have some guests who are like, yeah, you're doing some reheated trash from the 90s.

[00:07:09] Like I'd love to swing in and chat about it and then you I feel like you you get energized by less pop culture. But when you are energized, it's it's very profound. And so that's that's when we like to you know to talk to you.

[00:07:24] That's the thing we like when there is a convergence and this was a rare example. Where there were like two things you were interested in doing back-to-back. We won't say what the other one is because it's a future miniseries not announced. No, okay.

[00:07:39] Yeah, but we you came back and sort of said like this is actually one of the films I have the strongest opinions on the film. We're talking about today 28 days later. Yeah, it has a very unique.

[00:07:52] It has a very unique and I think almost unrepeatable place in my life as a movie watcher in that. I don't think I've ever seen another movie at the time of its release that clicked with me more in for reasons we can get into.

[00:08:15] Very interesting to me David was poking you on this right before we started recording, but you were saying that zombie movie is perhaps your favorite genre in theory, but also the genre with the widest convergence of movies you love versus movies you hate.

[00:08:34] Well, I think if you're a you know, like any aficionado if you truly love a genre or a type of work or a type of food or whatever you be you that means that you're only that much more particular about the examples that cross your.

[00:08:50] Palate so to speak. And I think for years I've always really responded to zombie movies for a number of reasons some of which are like. I think they kind of confirm my my political sensibility and my nihilistic prejudices.

[00:09:08] I also have had over the course of my life a recurring nightmare about zombies and so I think there must be something on a deep deep psychological level about zombies that is uncanny and yet fulfilling and comforting. Do you know what your first zombie movie was like?

[00:09:23] What was your entree to the genre? Well, we'll have to draw a distinction between zombie movies and post-apocalyptic movies because there's a lot of overlap in both of them.

[00:09:34] But I have a feeling that the first so in preparation for this episode because I was so stoked to talk about zombies. I rewatched a lot of zombie movies. I think I watched nine zombie movies in the past nine. Wow one a night one a night.

[00:09:47] I want the list. I want to line up. Yeah, I'll tell y'all to I wrote them down in chronological order for the benefit of your listeners. Here we go. Night of the Living Dead 1968 classic.

[00:09:59] I'm going to pause only to say that I was stunned to realize this but I still think that is the best zombie movie ever made.

[00:10:07] Wow, it's so uncanny and it is so close to the recurring nightmares that I have had over the course of my life about people just standing outside my house. We're going to dig more into this nightmare by the way. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

[00:10:24] Yeah, but it feels incredibly real in a way that. A lot of them can't because a lot of them are borrowing from that movie to this day. It's one of those lightning in a bottle movies to where it's there.

[00:10:36] There are just like accidents that lend it this weird alchemy that makes it bigger than it ever could be intentionally as much as it's a film made by incredibly intelligent skilled people. No totally totally and the and the final you know,

[00:10:53] that the sequence of photographs at the end of it with the meat hooks is still absolutely dread inducing and just like totally masterful. So I started with that one. I started back at the wellspring Night of the Living Dead.

[00:11:07] Then I watched George Romero's movie from 1973 called the crazies. Yeah. Yeah, which is a close analog to 28 days later, which I think I had seen maybe in middle school, you know,

[00:11:23] a lot of these movies made the slumber party circuit back in my youth on VHS cassette or on HBO or whatever Cinemax. And I will say that revisiting the crazies that movie is a damn masterpiece. That movie is so much better than the next movie. I watched from 1978,

[00:11:40] which is widely considered the best zombie movie ever made, which is Romero's Dawn of the dead. It's certainly a classic,

[00:11:47] which is definitely a classic and you can see you can see so much of the source code of contemporary zombie iconography at least up until movies like 28 days later when all that stuff got subverted and ramped up. But I would say Dawn of the dead has not aged.

[00:12:01] Well, that is like a blinding hot take not that I'm disagree. I have not seen Dawn of the dead in a long time, but I do I do love it. I do also love the crazies. The crazies is good. I saw Dawn of the dead again recently.

[00:12:16] I saw it right around last Halloween. They do you know the weird saga of the 3D remaster of this movie? The original one from the 70s. They turned it into 3D. Yeah, I'm going to give the shortest version of this story but like, you know,

[00:12:32] the Romero franchise is famous for the rights all being fucked up and Romero never retaining any of them and they're all being split between different weird money people night of the living dead going to public domain because he forgot to copyright the new title versus the old title.

[00:12:47] Whatever one of these guys who threw some changing of hands ended up with the rights to the original Dawn of the dead,

[00:12:54] but only dawn in like 2012 when there were the 3D releases of like Titanic and Lion King and Jurassic Park and they were doing okay was like great. That's what I'll do. That's how I'll make my money.

[00:13:07] I'll convert this to 3D and spent like six million dollars converting it to 3D and by the time it was done. The 3D fad had just like completely collapsed. And for the last 10 years, you can't really easily rent on of the dead.

[00:13:24] It's not in print in any home media.

[00:13:27] They're like very few legal ways if any to watch it in the United States because this guy controls the rights and he's basically like I'm not going to let anyone see this until I can make back my money on the 3D re-release. I just found it on YouTube.

[00:13:41] Someone had posted it on you. It's on YouTube. Yes, and I just streaming YouTube. Yeah, not streaming on any official service right now.

[00:13:47] But yeah, yes, you cannot watch it legally, but he finally got some like two night only release nationwide of the 3D thing with very little advertising glass Halloween. I went to see it. I will say the 3D work on it was good.

[00:14:02] He clearly paid a lot of money on it, but seeing that movie in a theater again, it was better than I remembered it being. Oh interesting. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't know. I just you're not wrong. It's just your opinion. Yeah, that's true. It's just my opinion.

[00:14:18] All right.

[00:14:18] The next one I watched was me and I have I have such a hazy memory of watching this at a slumber party that David this might be my first exposure to zombie movies and this one I feel like has aged very well and is a lot of fun and that is return of the living dead when the punk rockers go into the cemetery and make off make out and take off their shirts and then they get, you

[00:14:43] know, hornswoggled by these zombies. Yeah, crazy Dan O'Bannon movie with great, you know practical effects and all that. It's a lot of fun and another child of the weird right splits of the Romero movies, right? This guy had the rights to of the living dead.

[00:14:59] He can retain the rights to that title formulation, right? So it's like an alternate sequel essentially to the first Romero movie and this was the movie apparently that established the trope that zombies are interested in eating brains. Because there's one slimy black zombie. That's a great costar man.

[00:15:17] We're talking tar man. Yeah tar man. Yeah, I wasn't sure if you would know him by his name, but I'm very familiar with his work. Yes. Yeah, and he just says brains before then they just would eat your flesh just any any part of your flesh right?

[00:15:30] This guy goes for brains, right? Which is also fatty not a lot of protein, right? Yeah, exactly. Then I watched a movie that came out 17 years later, which is 28 days later. And you know what? I might have actually watched 28 days later.

[00:15:47] I think I think watching it again for this podcast might might have pushed it over. The the line and this might now be the movie. I have watched more than any other movie. Wow. I think I have seen this movie six times.

[00:16:05] Wow, and I think that's a new personal record for me. So I've really watched this movie a lot.

[00:16:10] Yeah, so I watched 28 days later and then I watched a Spanish language zombie movie that I had never seen but I'd always been on my radar called wreck or REC record. That movie is terrific. That movie I agree was terrific. I was hooting and hollering.

[00:16:25] It was a remade in America as quarantine, right? Yes, which is okay, but wreck is really fun. Yeah, I enjoyed it. Then I watched the Rad Pitt vehicle World War Z. Oh sure.

[00:16:39] Maybe for the third time which I think the thing that recommends World War Z is just some colossal set pieces that only a big budget zombie movie can do interesting. I've always sort of avoided that movie but you're making ever seen it.

[00:16:53] No, and that's kind of a good argument is just like I was kind of against the idea of a zombie movie being that huge. But I hear what you're saying of like except this is the one time a zombie movie could depict some of these things.

[00:17:06] This is the PG-13, you know, hundred and fifty million dollar zombie movie. It's right, you know, it's the exception to that sort of formula. I that in my opinion is sort of half a good movie.

[00:17:18] Like there's a lot of there is there are some good set pieces in it. I remember it being a little all over the place. It sort of jumps around. Oh, well, he travels around the world. It's just him going from one location to the plot is like.

[00:17:29] We have to go find this scientist in Burma and they show up in Burma and they're like that scientist died two days ago. The only scientists left is Israel.

[00:17:36] Well, I guess we have to find a plane and go to Israel like he winds up in Wales or something or winds up in either Scotland or what? You know, it is way. Right. You're right. Yeah, Peter Capaldi is there.

[00:17:45] Yeah, he's one of the scientists at the lab. Yeah, but it's got some stuff. It's got some good moments and it has I think the I think the most so 28 days later. It's great innovation was fast zombies, right? Zombies just booking.

[00:18:00] Yes, and then why I think World War Z's innovation was zombie piles or moving mountains of zombies. Right? They just sort of like swarm and yeah, it's like it's very like it's very insect like right? Right, and it's it's it's fine.

[00:18:14] It's whatever then I watched I think for the second or third time train to Busan which feels like the most recent widely recognized classic of the genre. Yeah, which is which is good. That zombies on a train, of course.

[00:18:30] And then I watched a movie that I had never heard of until I decided to do this zombie research in anticipation of this episode.

[00:18:37] This is a zombie movie with a great premise, but unfortunately an execution that I didn't like and it's a Canadian zombie movie called blood quantum. Have you ever heard of this movie? No, no, it was 2019.

[00:18:51] Yeah, it was at TIFF a few years ago and it was one of those TIFF sort of midnight movies that a few people were like, yeah, you know, there's something to that one. And then it became kind of like a shutter hit. Right? Yeah, I've never seen it.

[00:19:07] It's set in the 80s, right? It's got this kind of like vintage feel. It's set in 1981 in Canada on the I think it's called the Red Creek reservation and the premise is that there's a zombie outbreak and all the First Nations peoples are immune to it.

[00:19:23] But all the white Canadians are can fall victim to becoming zombies. So they obviously are all desperate to get into the compound that the tribe has built. It's kind of a cool premise. Yeah. Yeah, it's a good like inversion of history 101 and it's a funny premise.

[00:19:41] There's a lot of obviously like satirical possibilities there and really interesting, you know, psychological and political stuff to deal with but there's something about the way it's shot.

[00:19:51] It felt slack or diffuse in a way that I think is the exact opposite of what I want and out of my zombie movies. I will say this in your list that you've just provided.

[00:20:03] There's this big jump between Return of the Living Dead, which is like 85 and 28 days later, which is 2002 right depending on what country lived in.

[00:20:13] So I was sort of like is there really nothing in between and obviously there were zombie movies in between but it is true that there really wasn't like a sort of definitive hit zombie movie in that long. Went out of fashion.

[00:20:27] I think you have to give this movie credit as the revival point because Shaun of the Dead obviously, which is sort of this big Romero homage. That's a couple years later, right? And that's more of like the classic zombie with the zombies are stumbling around or whatever.

[00:20:42] This movie felt like a really like shocking, you know update and the fast zombie thing felt it was it was new. It was injection of lifeblood. The Dawn of the Dead remake uses that then you get Romero making zombie movies again.

[00:20:56] That obviously leads to the Walking Dead comic and then the show like this is a World War Z. This is the the revival point really David. Do you like this sort of later Romero trilogy his weird land land and yeah videotapes of the dead or whatever?

[00:21:14] Yeah, it's log of the dead land of the dead. I only watched once and I was kind of intrigued to revisit it because that's the one where like everyone is just living with zombies, right?

[00:21:25] And all the rich people are up at the top of a tower and it's like Edward Hopper and John Leguizamo and Dennis Hopper. It would be interesting if it was Edward. Yeah, that'd be good. The great painter American realist painter.

[00:21:36] I mean he'd have a lot of material zombie Edward Hopper has come back to update all his iconic paintings land. I owe a rewatch. I only saw when it came out in theater.

[00:21:46] Well, I remember the hype when it came out was so profound and then people were like, huh? Like it's sort of heavy on the socio-political stuff and light on the horror.

[00:21:56] Yeah, like light light but like, you know, it's not it's not this sort of whatever people wanted super intense. It's kind of like that Star Wars movie where they just sit in the Senate and argue about the Iraq War. Yes, exactly revenge of the Sith.

[00:22:11] You know the one I'm talking about where there's just like a lot of council meetings and oh, yes. Oh, yeah, we covered Cornell West is in it. I think was Cornell West in a Star Wars movie and a Matrix sequels.

[00:22:21] Yes, but wasn't he also in one of the Star Wars movies? I don't put it past him, but I don't think so. Yeah, but he's definitely a government minister in the Matrix movies, right? He is on the like Council of elders in the Matrix sequels.

[00:22:35] He has a big harmonica around his neck and he's one of the various people being like but Morpheus can you really chart a path through the you know, like there you get a lot a lot of chat. How long is this going to take two more movies?

[00:22:47] Oh my God, let's make movies but you talk about the gap Sims like what happens in between return the living dead which feels like the newest country the last new contribution of zombie ideas until 28 days later,

[00:23:03] right and sort of a seismic way the zombie movies that exist in between those two points are return of the living dead sequels night of the living dead remake.

[00:23:14] Yeah, you know like it's a lot of staying in the zone of what has already been established and and day of the dead like it's like everyone sort of keeping the course of what has already been laid out and then a lot of you know,

[00:23:27] obviously like lower tier. That's the thing. I think it becomes a really reliable straight to video kind of thing. It becomes like a sea genre instead of even a genre anymore and the B genre examples are sequels and remakes of what has already been done.

[00:23:43] Although I will say it is funny that the list of zombie movies list that I'm looking on does include weekend at Bernie's to not weekend at Bernie's.

[00:23:55] Well, no because David in the first weekend at Bernie's Bernie is dead and they puppeteer the body in the second weekend of birdies his dead body is possessed and walks on its own right? Right got voodooed you guys have never seen it. That's not I have not seen.

[00:24:13] The first weekend at Bernie's is our boss died. We have to write. We got to pretend he's alive. But there's right and it's like how you do that for a second. How you doing right? Like exactly. You got it David. They're marrying Eddie.

[00:24:27] The second movie is Bernie gets voodooed and he is physically as a dead body walking like a zombie towards a point where there is buried treasure and they have to chase this dead body to find where the buried treasure.

[00:24:43] Now you might be wondering does he hook up with somebody Bernie does you can't you don't have that in zombie movies? No, not usually. No, that is that is rare surprise that we can at Bernie's to hasn't been a Ben's choice.

[00:24:59] Yeah, I mean, I guess there's there's the the Lucio Fulci movies zombie to have you ever seen that one never seen. No, I've got one sort of a euro euro zombie class on the 70s to the Holocaust. It is a funny genre.

[00:25:17] So why does it speak to you David? Why you know, why does the well, you know again in doing my prayerful consideration of zombies and anticipation of this episode? I will start by saying this.

[00:25:30] I am worried now that zombie movies are inherently reactionary and I don't consider myself a reactionary but there's I think one of the pleasures of zombie movies and it's and and you see it most overtly in the Zack Snyder remake of Dawn of the dead is the zombie movie creates the permission structure where you

[00:25:54] can take a gun and just shoot people all day long and you don't have to you don't have to have a guilty conscience because they are actually not people anymore. Right? You're if anything you're saving them. You're it's a moral right thing to do. Right?

[00:26:06] Yeah, it's the ultimate othering of formal formally human beings, right? What were formerly human beings and of course, there's all the prepper stuff that comes the prepper fantasies of let's wall ourselves inside this compound and eat all this canned corn and and you know,

[00:26:23] make solar panels and live forever. We don't need anybody else, right? It's become like an internet subgenre people being like, here's how I would prepare for the zombie apocalypse. Exactly. Here are some blueprints.

[00:26:35] Here's the shopping list like yeah all that and obviously it in a way that stuff is really fun and exciting because then you have the pleasure of being like why aren't these idiots always just wrapping phone books around their forearms to protect themselves from the zombies?

[00:26:51] Why are these people just putting on football helmets for God's sake? The first thing I would do is just find a football uniform and put it on. I'd have shoulder pads and zombies wouldn't be able to do shit to me.

[00:27:00] It's right how low zombie movies are on that kind of like ad hoc armor. I think that's because it's hard to identify with protagonists whose bodies are completely bulky and obscured. Although people do love football, which is crazy because those people are always, you know suited up.

[00:27:18] It's always been the argument for why it's harder to be famous as a football player because you are not seen. Because nobody can see you. Yes.

[00:27:26] So, you know, the only people who are really seen are quarterbacks because they get so much attention and they're sitting on the, you know, sideline a lot and they're looking very serious and they're, you know, but like that's why it's tougher in a way to be a football player because you're kind of this anonymous, you know, soldier in this giant squadron.

[00:27:44] Yeah. So when I was young and really getting into zombie movies, the prepping stuff did not yet have the sort of like right wing militia. Sure. QAnon associations that it has now in 2023. But putting aside the political, the political association with zombie movies.

[00:28:06] I think for me, the zombie movie speaks to this suspicion I've always had, which is like.

[00:28:13] We're all just like one inch away from going completely feral, like right, like with this being a human and living in a society that functions is a very precarious situation that is the result of millennia of collective achievement and innovation. And it could really come.

[00:28:32] It could really come apart at the seams at any moment. And that might be me showing a sort of adolescent know it all performative nihilism. But I do think that certain events in the last few years have kind of like reassured me that like, yeah, you were right.

[00:28:51] It doesn't take much. Wait, wait. Is there something going on with civilization? Are things okay? Totally. And the reason that 28 days later really clicked with me on a really deep level that very few movies ever have. So I don't know if you got, I'm older than you guys.

[00:29:11] When, when 28 days later came out in the United States, it was 2003. I think it came out in the summer of 2003. Yep. Late June, 2003. The United States had invaded Iraq in the spring of 2003 in mid March.

[00:29:26] And I was doing an online political cartoon at the time about the war on terror that was being waged by George W. Bush on behalf of all civilized society. Yes, get your war on exactly.

[00:29:37] Get your war on was the name of the comic strip and I was, you know, reading a lot of newspapers and also reading a lot of books and I had read two books shortly before I saw this movie in the movie theater and the movie really spoke.

[00:29:52] It felt like it was in conversation with these books. The first book was the Samantha power book called a problem from hell, which is about genocide in America's response or lack of response to genocide in the 20th century.

[00:30:05] Right and specifically about how the entire concept of genocide was created by this guy named Raphael Lemkin because he needed to name he needed there had never been a name for the crime of trying to eradicate an entire population or an entire culture.

[00:30:19] And then the other book is a tiny book by Chris Hedges, who was a former war correspondent called war is a force that gives us meaning and this book had a real impact on me because as a former war correspondent, Chris Hedges was writing about how exhilarating and addictive war can be.

[00:30:41] In spite of the violence and in spite of the trauma, it obviously can create bonds of patriotism among a population because now you're united and fighting someone else. But this is also that point in time where we're all reacting from this like unspeakable tragedy that felt 9 11. Yeah, yes.

[00:31:00] I'll say it. I'll say it. 9 11. It's awful tragedy and then you're like so quickly shifting to our most August beloved trusted voices in television news standing in front of tanks saying like this is an awesome killing machine. Right exactly.

[00:31:19] Yeah, you could feel like you like if you were opposed to the idea of a never ending war on terror and if you were opposed to invading an occupying Iraq while Afghanistan was still just like a total fucking shit show.

[00:31:30] You could feel really lonely and crazy because there wasn't much in pop culture or even on the news that reflected that sensibility of skepticism and like can we can we just like put a pump the brakes just a little before we go invade a second country in two years?

[00:31:47] You know I remember Letterman having Bill O'Reilly on his show and he would have him on so they could get antagonistic and fight about everything and let him try to get some good blows in on him.

[00:31:58] Bill O'Reilly came out with like a fucking gladiator helmet and a plastic sword and shield and was doing the like here we go kind of thing. Right yeah. But like Letterman was really kind of drilling in to him on like why is this war necessary?

[00:32:12] Like what is this war exactly? Why are we doing this war in this country at this scale like all this sort of stuff. Now right now.

[00:32:21] Yeah and just that weird sense with the Iraq war where like a year out you were like oh wait they want to do that and they're just kind of gonna do it like. Yeah.

[00:32:30] And they were just kind of slowly building like blocks up being like yeah we're probably gonna do it you know like and you were just like why and they were like I don't know we probably should right and you're like anyway.

[00:32:40] It's been a while since we've like redone the kitchen. The but O'Reilly was you know defending it from reactionary sort of whatever patriotic jingoistic we were hurt we need to we can't stand idly by.

[00:32:59] They're attacking our values what we represent as a country or whatever and Letterman I thought put it so well because he was so clumsy and how he.

[00:33:07] Was going about it in a way accidentally where he was like look I know nothing about politics I'm an idiot I don't understand this stuff.

[00:33:15] I do relate to the basic idea of what you're saying where when 9-11 happened it felt like such a moral wrong and it hurt so much that it felt like there has to be something we do in response to this.

[00:33:30] And it just feels like you have taken advantage of that. Yeah totally I mean the reason we invaded Iraq so soon after 9-11 is they were worried people would stop being like those of those emotions would dissipate yeah you know the anger and the hurt and.

[00:33:47] Would disappear and then it would be hard to justify an invasion that made no fucking sense and cost a lot of money and killed many many many and also killed over a hundred Iraqis.

[00:33:59] But it ended really quickly right I'm checking my notes here it was over within a.

[00:34:10] It is I mean look I was 17 years old when we invaded Iraq I lived in England I was American I was just you know I was against the war I was also 17 years old you know I was I had I had what I had at my disposal intellectually but.

[00:34:30] There was this sort of like weird insane burden of being the American especially in England because Britain had gone into the war and no one in Britain like that. Thank you Tony Blair.

[00:34:39] Yeah yeah like there was very little excitement in Britain about the Iraq war really and I this is I was not living in some bubble I mean I think most people know that.

[00:34:48] And then I just felt this kind of like embarrassment and sort of like lack you know like defensiveness but also this inability to really kind of explain my country to people and I don't know it was a very very unsettling time good good good good yeah good times yeah.

[00:35:07] Anyway carry on bad bad David bad oh sorry you're right you're right you're right so all you know all this stuff was very much on my mind is a political cartoonist and going you know you're going to all these massive anti-war protests in the back of the.

[00:35:18] You know it doesn't make it it's not gonna make a damn difference cuz I've already got all the tanks and shit on the border ready to go you know.

[00:35:26] But this Chris hedges book is it it's a it's a short book like you can read it in like a day or two and because it's written from the perspective of someone who was for a while addicted to being a war correspondent which is really what that's like like my mom had friends who were cars once they were at you was like kind of thing like why would you go back there and they're like I love it you know.

[00:35:47] I fucking love it it's a apparently a crazy rush right now in the service you know you're covering something that's usually the the last worst option. To actual war fighting writing killing and he also talks a lot about how.

[00:36:04] And Samantha power talks about this in her book and this isn't this is a this is obviously a huge part of the twist in 28 days later is how often sex and rape is used as a weapon of war.

[00:36:14] You can think of examples like the Rwandan genocide with the stories are just like 50,000 times more horrific than anything you would ever seen a zombie movie. Right.

[00:36:24] So I was thinking about all the stuff and feeling a little crazy and then in this is really going to put it in this is really going to bring you back to that era.

[00:36:34] I was on the phone with one of the few people who seemed willing to go on like Fox News and MSNBC and get yelled at for being skeptical of the war and that was the American comedian Janine Garofalo.

[00:36:46] Yeah she really was an icon of the early 2000s in a way only one who would do it like everyone else was either too scared to go on TV or just wanted the war to happen and she was you know very.

[00:36:59] Ardently skeptical and willing to be like the abuse I'm going to suffer on this news broadcast that's the price I'll pay to let people know that there are there are people out there who think this might be a bad idea.

[00:37:12] And if people want to discuss this abstract idea of cancel culture she had a sitcom on ABC that had been filmed and she starts speaking out against the war on new shows and they were just like oh we're never going to air this.

[00:37:27] And they just put it on a shelf and it has still never been seen in her career like immediately change she stopped being someone hireable. Right. In any public sphere outside of her doing her own stand up.

[00:37:39] In the 90s she was an iconic character actress who is in one billion movies as like friends and sidekick. Right. Yeah yeah. Sometimes romantic interest at all. And then like in the 2000s it was like well she's like on Air America or whatever.

[00:37:53] And like you say and on like you know cable news as this like feisty person who will dare actually be like oh I actually don't like George W. Bush or whatever you know like anyway that's so funny.

[00:38:05] Anyway you were talking wait did you say you were talking to Janine Garofalo.

[00:38:07] Yeah because speaking of Air America they were starting Air America and she had called me about some Air America because we had been on panels together like we had met each other when we would go to like a panel and be on like satire in the age of terror.

[00:38:20] Like I did a hundred of those types of panels when I was a political cartoonist you know. Right. Me Janine Garofalo Art Spiegelman and then like somebody else you know.

[00:38:29] So Janine had called me to talk about something about Air America I think and she said oh by the way I saw this amazing movie you've got to see it. It's called 28 Days Later. It's a zombie movie.

[00:38:40] And my ears completely perked up like zombie movies why that's my favorite genre of movie although I've never seen one that's intellectually sophisticated enough to satisfy my fancy pants affect. She said you've got to see this movie. It's about what we're living through. It's about the Iraq war.

[00:38:56] People get infected with rage and go crazy. It was like OK I'll check it out.

[00:39:00] So sure enough I went to go see it in the movie theater and for a number of reasons from first the fact that they shot it on a fucking fax machine it just looks so. Like a game boy. Yeah I mean it really is like.

[00:39:18] It's so DIY you know it's like what if Operation Ivy made a zombie movie. It didn't even look like a game boy camera. It looks like what the Game Boy Printer would print out from the Game Boy. Yeah absolutely.

[00:39:32] It just looked so weird and there were so many aesthetic choices like the fact that the soundtrack is all just like super fuzzed out post rock guitar soundtrack. Oh yeah.

[00:39:44] And then the political subtext that I brought to the movie probably because my head was swimming with these books by Samantha Power and Chris Hedges where.

[00:39:52] And this happens a lot in zombie movies where the people who you think are going to keep you safe are actually as much of a threat as the zombies like that's one of the big lessons that we can learn from zombie movies.

[00:40:01] It's almost like you know humanity right is the real monster. Right exactly. There might not be that much separating us between us and the undead.

[00:40:09] But the fact that it was an explicitly military compound and the first thing they wanted to do basically was start raping the female protagonists and breeding a new society was like oh right because they're all jazzed up with war.

[00:40:21] And there's this Eros Thanatos dynamic that you see so often in war fighting where you want to kill you kill people and then you're all your adrenaline is going crazy and then you just want to rape people like there were so many things in this.

[00:40:34] This is not my favorite movie. It's probably not even my favorite zombie movie.

[00:40:39] But like I said I don't think I've ever had an experience in a movie theater where basically the whole time I'm just sitting there being like yep yep and that's right on the head and you nailed that to just everything about it.

[00:40:53] It just really really clicked for me. And I don't even like Danny Boyle movies that much. Like oh sure you do. He's your favorite. I like Sunshine a lot until the last piece five or 10 minutes. That's a great one with also a great soundtrack but like train spotting.

[00:41:10] I feel like the train spotting boys are just not your boys. Well there's I just I only saw it once and my and I know my brother really likes train spotting. He's a little bit younger than me.

[00:41:20] I just remember and this is actually a bone I have to pick with certain comedic zombie movies that can go unnamed at the risk of alienating some of your listeners. I remember there being some character in train spotting with a big goofy mustache who's like incredibly violent. Yes.

[00:41:36] Beg. OK. Right. And sometimes it felt like that was played for. I'm at the age now. I can't watch violence be funny. It's just something switched in my head some years ago.

[00:41:49] All those bad boy British movies that came out around the time of train spotting people just beating the shit out of each other and it's so shocking and tacky and how do you put it again David.

[00:42:00] Let that someone in a pork pie hat punches someone and says lovely jubbly. Is that what you're talking about. Yeah that kind of stuff. There's something about I can't watch people. You love that quote of mine. It's funny. David I know what you mean. Are you.

[00:42:14] Look can we talk about Shaun of the Dead for just a second. A movie that people don't like. I'll give you 30 seconds of unreserved bile. I don't dislike Shaun of the Dead. I think it's quite well done. I totally get why it had such an outsized impact.

[00:42:31] But I remember feeling the way you're describing right now and I think I've talked about this before very strongly where when it made the pivot to sort of like despairing intense violence.

[00:42:43] I was like I just don't think I can enjoy this like it and still be laughing and like going like oh Sean you know you're so silly. Like I have always struggled with the total shift in that movie.

[00:42:54] I just remember the scene where they're where they're just beating the shit out of everybody in the pub listening to Queens Don't Stop Me Now and I was like I was like I can't. I mean it's master.

[00:43:04] Those guys always make these masterful movies that are just like complete jewel boxes and it shows like absolute mastery of genre and parody and everything and the opening of Shaun of the Dead is just like so incredible where they play with the tropes of things are slowly askew something's off and the guy doesn't even like all this stuff is incredible filmmaking.

[00:43:22] But when it comes to people beating beating and I know there's zombies but they're people like zombies are people. That's the fucked up thing that people have to wrap their head around like it's what's so distressing about that. Yeah exactly not aliens.

[00:43:36] They're not monsters and they're not a different species. Right right. I know I know they're arguably classified somewhat more as vampires than zombies.

[00:43:48] Do you have opinions on I am legend last man on earth Omega Man because I feel like that's none of the adaptations have totally gotten this right although I do like all three of those movies on different levels.

[00:44:04] But that's the really interesting idea in that story is the realization from this guy at the end of like I'm fighting a species that now is its own functional civilization.

[00:44:17] I'm trying to eradicate them but like I am the legend now I am the sort of odd mythological creature they figure out a way to work that is functional for them. I like Omega Man and I am legend.

[00:44:33] I think those are both pretty good movies but like any post apocalyptic movie or even some zombie movies I think they're at their best when it's just like Will Smith walking around looking for people and then there's a deer in Times Square just that the best shit of Will Smith's career.

[00:44:50] It is well but it's also it's the best shit of this movie. It's always made. Well that's what I think anyway.

[00:44:55] It's always to me the most profound special effect especially when it's a movie like this that's actually achieving it practically right of just the eeriness of an empty city and then maybe yes some weird incongruity like a deer or whatever. Oh nature has reclaimed bubble.

[00:45:14] You know like but I think it's more I think it's more effective in 28 days later than I am legend because I'm legend. It's years later and it's all overgrown and that's obviously like CGI grass. I mean yeah Times Square but I like I am legend a lot.

[00:45:27] It's a really fun blockbuster. I agree. But yeah no the 28 days later is eerie in ways that few movies like this are genuinely eerie.

[00:45:37] It's like a De Chirico painting you know that artist De Chirico the mystery and melancholy of a city street when he's when Jim is walking around London in this weird I guess it's like dawn light and stuff.

[00:45:49] It reminds me of those De Chirico paintings which are very dreamlike and very again uncanny. We'll we'll get into this more I'm sure.

[00:45:58] But the sort of timeline of Danny Boyle and Alex Garland's positioning of this movie in the press when they were promoting it it felt like they very quickly tried to shake off the zombie title and it was like well they're not really zombies so you shouldn't hold them to the history of zombies.

[00:46:15] They're the infected. It's sort of its own thing. And then they pivoted even more to being like this isn't a movie about them. It's a movie about societal collapse. The infected people aren't the important point.

[00:46:25] And I think a lot of that was that zombie was a bit of a bad word. It was seen as such a low rent thing that they didn't want to get tagged with that.

[00:46:33] Yeah and they and they also I think didn't want nerds yelling at them about like zombies have to do this this right. And they're like we're not trying to tell you what zombies do.

[00:46:40] This is what zombies have to go to the mall as a critique of 1980s cap consumer capitalism. But I think you're right.

[00:46:47] Reads that it's like they're being honest in that the societal collapse is the number one thing they're most interested in in this movie and the infected are like means to an end but they're also saying something more interesting with the infected than a lot of these modern movies are.

[00:47:01] Now I feel like we're talking around the insane thing. Are you aware Rees that this entire movie wrapped production before 9-11 happened. Well that was one of my questions that I was hoping someone would be able to answer because I think so.

[00:47:15] I love that because then that's that serves another one of my little theses that I've created in my mind.

[00:47:22] Because the movies that I compare this to most often in terms of how I responded to the movie this these are I'm going to name two other genre movies two other horror thriller genre movies that I that I found like a lot of comfort and insight in.

[00:47:40] About the Trump administration even though they came out or even though they were in production I think before Trump was elected. Yeah right. And now that you've said this thing about 28 days later it's the perfect analogy.

[00:47:50] So I think of 28 days later is one of the great movies about quote unquote 9-11 in the Iraq war and it ironically was produced before that has happened right. So two of my favorite movies of the last few years are Green Room and The Invitation.

[00:48:07] For a second I process that as Green Book but yes no that makes more sense what you're saying. Yes Green Book is a distant third but my top two are Green Room and The Invitation.

[00:48:17] I think the movies I have talked to you the most about since I've known you are those two. Yeah. Yes yeah. I think they have a lot to say about what we used to call quote unquote our current situation. Yes.

[00:48:30] And so 28 days later is the perfect analogy because yeah it's like and I guess that goes to I guess that goes to show that like some truths are universal and are not necessarily explicitly pegged to the news cycle which is something I have a hard time believing as a former political cartoonist who had a weekly deadline.

[00:48:45] There are some truths about human nature and society and how precious and delicate all these things are that you can make a movie about Trump before Trump is president.

[00:48:54] But it's still kind of mind blowing to me because when you respond to these movies or at least when I respond to them I respond to them through such a specific political lens that it just feels like it had to have been made like after the fact.

[00:49:09] You know this is a thing I've been thinking about a lot because this year's crop of sort of Oscar or Oscar aspirational movies have mostly all bombed in release. And there's this sort of conversation it seems you're one of the people pushing this point a lot.

[00:49:27] The serious fall releases the right Babelman's tar band she's right whatever you know they all underperformed women talking things like that. Right.

[00:49:37] And the point you keep making Sims which I've been chewing on a lot is you know people like me who who rush to apocalyptic thought are just saying like well I guess just the serious adult theater going audience has has left.

[00:49:55] There are now 500000 people in the United States of America who will go see any serious movie and there's a ceiling on that right.

[00:50:03] And your take has been the movies that we're looking at and bemoaning the bombing of are all difficult and off putting even though it was a tough crop.

[00:50:15] It was a tough crop for what I perceive is sort of my boomer relatives and I do not say boomer pejoratively who had been saying to me like I'm ready to start returning to theaters what's out there. What should I see.

[00:50:29] And I would be like well you know you got the Babelman's kind of like a hugely autobiographical Spielberg movie about movie making you know like I would always tail off because I knew I did not have a hook for them on any of these. Right.

[00:50:42] Like I knew that they weren't going to be like oh that sounds interesting you know like you know even with tar which is probably the most sellable in a way you kind of just have to be like well you know what you really just got to see it.

[00:50:52] It's it's just kind of like a special thing like or whatever. Well yeah.

[00:50:56] And like on one side certain people are like I don't want to watch a fucking two and a half hour movie about a hoity toity conductor and then there's another side of person that's like is this some fucking cancel culture diatribe that I don't want to watch. Right.

[00:51:07] Then there's things like she said that bomb and you're just like well kind of no surprise here right. Yeah. No one on earth wants to see that. Right. I've seen some journalists sort of making this point not even making this point.

[00:51:20] I feel like I've seen some filmmakers making this point.

[00:51:22] I'm trying to remember who it was I saw said this but it's really been ringing in my head a lot recently that like movies trying to meet the culture rarely work if you are responding to the thing that has already been crystallized in the national dialogue.

[00:51:39] We don't then want to watch a movie because we're already digesting this thing. We don't need it repackaged for us. The post Iraq war movies. Yes. Mostly failed at sort of attracting interest because like you say people were just kind of like no I watched the news.

[00:51:59] I don't I don't. And like the last big hit you know Oscar crossover war movie of that era is Black Hawk Down which is the one that comes out right after right before the war starts. You know it's like another post 9 11. It's that post 9 11 pre I guess invasion.

[00:52:20] But but I do think there's that thing where it's like a movie like this 20 days later feels like well this has to be in response to the things that happened right before this movie came out. But the reality is Danny Boyle wasn't a fortune teller.

[00:52:34] He couldn't see the way that things were going to like manifest and bubble over. But this movie is verbalizing things that were percolating. He could feel what was like about to erupt.

[00:52:46] What if he had access to the presidential daily briefing that said bin Laden determined to invite the United to attack us. He was like OK there's a movie in here somewhere. Bush wasn't reading them so maybe he was passing it off to the boy.

[00:52:56] Condi Rice was actually using Danny Boyle as a sounding board. Yeah. I was going on.

[00:53:01] But even watching movies like this 20 years later you can feel the difference between this is a movie made by someone who's been reading the newspapers every day and is trying to find a way to dramatize the thing that is happening in front of all of us versus this is Danny Boyle struggling to verbalize something that is a little bit unspeakable at that moment.

[00:53:21] And then like lucky for him unlucky for culture by the time the movie comes out everything had come to a head and now it was understandable by everybody you know.

[00:53:32] But I do think it's that thing of like movies don't meet the culture the culture meets the movies in terms of the things that really stick. A movie is somehow getting at something that then happens to overlap with what's going on culturally in the time it comes out.

[00:53:46] Arrival's another one where I remember seeing that movie at an early screening and going like this thing's great it's going to bomb really hard. And then it came out the week after Trump was elected and was a surprise hit.

[00:53:57] And it's like this movie was in no way a response to Trump.

[00:54:01] Yeah but that movie feels so profoundly it's all about like we can't be talking past each other and like right you know things can get out of hand so easily and well you know I love that movie.

[00:54:11] Suddenly all these things in that movie that felt a little heady and inaccessible a month earlier when I had seen it felt like very accessible to everyone you know or not to everyone but you know what I'm saying. No no no 100 percent.

[00:54:25] I don't know how many movies we've covered on this show that are like that but this is certainly one of them you know that weird like how did this movie get ahead of the thing.

[00:54:35] And how is it still 20 years later feel like a better statement on this era than anything that came out of it. Let me crack into the dossier unless you want to say something David.

[00:54:48] Well I just wanted to say I really like the way you are the way you explain that Griffin because as a former political cartoonist who sometimes does other stuff like my default my default mode of pop culture making I think is a is a sort of.

[00:55:06] Like immediate didactic ism that doesn't leave any room for like the ebb and flow of actual lived human experience you know.

[00:55:17] And the idea that a that a good artist can anticipate something that's bubbling up in the culture and express it and kind of get out ahead of it even if their artifact isn't released until after it whatever it is.

[00:55:30] Is really interesting and I guess that's why people still read Shakespeare because you're you're operating on a level that is not that is not dictated by weekly deadlines and whatever the news of the week is and Fallujah or whatever but you're actually talk you're trying to make points about humanity which is more or less constant over the course of a new cycle right.

[00:55:53] Yeah not just to be fair to yourself doing a comic strip is a very different medium than doing a movie where you're on a regular rotation you're part of that dialogue in real time.

[00:56:07] Yeah that's true too I don't I don't mean yeah I don't mean to beat up on myself like but you're right it's it's a completely different I mean.

[00:56:14] A movie you have to know that whatever you're making needs to make sense a year out from the point where you're starting it if not more.

[00:56:20] And most political cartoons are essentially just like subway graffiti like you read it and it's gone and it doesn't age well and there's no reason for it to age well because it's that's not what the. It's on its purpose right.

[00:56:30] It's a real time processing thing rather than movies which have to in some way be some mirror of something broad enough that it makes sense removed from time. Yeah yeah. Let's crack open that.

[00:56:42] Yeah so here's just so obviously Danny Boyle's whole thing is that you know he had made these movies with increasing budgets and the beach is this the most unwieldy thing he ever made he didn't enjoy anything about that and so he's sort of like.

[00:56:57] I have to downsize and in between he makes two TV movies for the BBC that are written by Jim Cartwright who is a playwright and who he'd worked with in the 80s.

[00:57:10] People have asked us why we're not doing vacuuming completely nude in paradise David you had this response to someone asking about. Holy shit did he make that. Yes he did. Do you love that. I think I saw that. It's good.

[00:57:23] Is there a reason why you didn't make it. I think I saw that. It's good. Is there a scene with like a vacuum salesman on the beach. Yes correct. I've seen that. That's Danny Boyle. That's Danny Boyle. That's his wilderness period. What. What was my response Griffin.

[00:57:38] I don't remember. It was a different question of someone saying are you going to cover this on the show and your response which I now just think this is oh this is the evergreen response anytime anyone asks us why aren't you including this in this miniseries.

[00:57:49] There's only so much time. There's only so much time in the world but I do recommend vacuuming completely nude in paradise with Timothy Spall which I have seen and is enjoyable.

[00:58:00] I have not seen the other thing he made the same year which is called Trumpet with Christopher Eccleston also by Jim Cartwright. I think vacuuming is currently on Amazon Prime in the States is free to watch. I saw it was streaming somewhere recently.

[00:58:17] That was like a sort of well-reviewed I mean Britain has this great tradition of the sort of the TV movie like yes in a way that America kind of doesn't anymore and like you know it's like a sterling example of that.

[00:58:28] And I think it was just good for him to be like OK I have no money. I have very little time.

[00:58:35] The way he puts it is like the budget for those two films wouldn't have covered like the catering of the beach but he just kind of needed to you know reset. He starts working with Anthony Dodd mantle on those.

[00:58:46] I think vacuuming is the first movie he does with Anthony Dodd mantle where he starts to develop this new simplified stripped down style that very much leads to 28 days later where it's like let's not care about how it looks.

[00:58:59] Anthony Dodd mantle very interesting because obviously he's going to win an Oscar with Danny Boyle for Slumdog Millionaire but he I first knew him as he's the dogma guy.

[00:59:11] He's he did yes test in and Mifune and Julian donkey boy like he and Dogville is his sort of fight you know like he did all these stripped down insane dog movies.

[00:59:22] I just to clarify it's not that they don't care if it looks good but it's that Boyle starts to become less precious and feels freed up by how small the cameras are.

[00:59:30] How sort of like why these sensors are and rather than making anything picture as pretty he's like well what's the freedom how much more can I move around how much quicker or setups how many more camera placements can I get a day.

[00:59:43] When I interviewed Soderbergh about what's it called High Flying Bird which he shot on an iPhone that was his whole argument for it was just like we can just walk and like down New York City you know fucking walk down Broadway and be like walk walk walk walk walk.

[00:59:57] This looks like a good spot set up five minutes you know like you know you can just like be ready to go immediately.

[01:00:04] So you know this is the early days of digital obviously but yes they're working with all that stuff so never going back to film never never going back to film you know that reference. You are never going. Yes. David Lynch.

[01:00:17] That's what David Lynch said when someone asked him about Inland Empire never going back to film never going back to film. Sims we should touch on Alien Love Triangle quickly is that in the dossier here.

[01:00:31] It's not it's in the beach dossier but let me find it but obviously that is it's such a strange. I just also think Rees will find this interesting. So one of your sponsors. Next week. Yeah. There are new THC gummies company.

[01:00:49] There there are combo mattress tux rental company. Well yeah sorry go ahead. In the late 90s Weinstein dimension Miramax had this idea to do a anthology movie where they went to three different directors and each of them did a 30 minute sci fi short film.

[01:01:09] And the three directors were Guillermo del Toro Gary Flater and Danny Boyle and the other two films both when they watched the release of the movie. And the other two films both when they watched the results went.

[01:01:27] Why don't you shoot like another hour of this and make this a feature. So one third of that becomes mimic Guillermo del Toro's American debut a film he had a very difficult time making and has talked about at length. One of them becomes imposter.

[01:01:41] And then the other one was the Sinise movie that's sort of an odd curio. Okay dick. Yeah. Yes. And basically got dumped on release but some people kind of have to fend.

[01:01:55] And then the third one was Danny Boyle's called Alien Love Triangle that has to date been screened one time. The world's smallest screening room at a train station. And it was screened for like 10 people in a converted train car. I don't think it's ever leaked out.

[01:02:39] It's never shown again. It's been this odd curio for so long especially because in the years where the beach bombs and between that and him reemerging with 20 days later where he's in TV it's sort of like what happened to Danny Boyle.

[01:02:56] His movies can't even get finished or released now. He had a movie with like three big stars. The premises list on Wikipedia is Steve Chester as a scientist was created teleportation device and hopes to use it for various purposes.

[01:03:09] He then goes home to his wife to share the news but he learned she is surprised from she is from outer space.

[01:03:16] It leads to a string of unusual events where beings from space come to visit Chester man as friends and show that all is not as things seem. It's written by John Hodge and produced by Andrew McDonald. It's the classic team of the first three movies. Yeah.

[01:03:28] I like that he invented a teleportation device and plan to use it for various purposes. That is good of him. Yeah. That he wasn't just like not going to use this at all or only going to use this to bet on basketball games or whatever.

[01:03:39] You know he had a lot of ideas. But doing the TV movies I think was also probably somewhat a reaction to his frustration of that never even getting seen. Yeah. Yeah sure. Yeah I don't. He's really not talked about that movie at all which is interesting.

[01:03:53] So Alex Garland obviously wrote the novel The Beach. He did not write the movie but he sits down with Andrew McDonald the producer of The Beach and all of Danny Boyle's movies and he says I've got an idea.

[01:04:06] He was sitting at a pizza place in a street in London called Charlotte Street. I think I know that pizza place. And he said I've got an idea for a film. It's about running zombies and it's got daylight and it's in London. That is his pitch.

[01:04:18] And Andrew McDonald says that sounds cool. And so Alex Garland goes off and writes a spec script and Alex Garland does not care about using the word zombies. He's like I don't care about the technical differences. I don't care if they're reanimated or not. Like it does there.

[01:04:35] Did this this film is in the lineage of zombie movies obviously. And the Resident Evil films which we did not mention of course David. Oh right. The other other blind spot in my zombie canon.

[01:04:49] I've never seen a Resident Evil film although I have watched somebody play that game and I remember being really exciting and scary. Romero was supposed to direct Resident Evil by the way. Rees. Yes. Oh really.

[01:05:01] He had directed a commercial for the video games that got a lot of buzz and then they were developing the movie and it was this thing that people were so amped about where they were like holy shit.

[01:05:11] A major studio is going to give Romero to make a modern zombie movie with modern technology. He's being legitimized and then I think they sort of got scared at the last second about him not making something accessible enough and flipped over. I think it was Anderson.

[01:05:28] It was a very loose adaptation of the game. There was some anxiety about that. There's just a weird scenario where Paul W. Sanderson was actually working on another zombie movie and they were like we're going to turn this into Resident Evil.

[01:05:40] It's all very strange but so but so that is a fair point that Alex Garland is making where he's like I did not revive the zombie.

[01:05:47] Genre Resident Evil the video game really was the beginning of the revival and I'm drafting off of that a little bit and obviously there is the movie although the movie at the time.

[01:05:57] I mean it did okay but it was not well received like no I love those films. I am fond of them.

[01:06:03] I'm fond of the series and the directions that go in but the first film video game fans were like this is not like the game and then regular critics like this is like trash.

[01:06:11] This is like stupid bullshit like you know so it was not really like a landmark. And horror people were like we could have gotten a Romero movie and we got this instead.

[01:06:20] It feels very sort of wafting off the vibes of The Matrix and equilibrium and that whole era. So another huge inspiration for Garland. Have you ever read The Day of the Triffids David Reese?

[01:06:35] I have had it recommended to me but I've never read it but I know the basic premise.

[01:06:40] And when I was talking to your former guest John Hodgman about the fact that I was doing this episode he said well you know they ripped off the opening of this movie from Day of the Triffids. I said no but I'll be sure to mention that.

[01:06:51] Isn't that also basically what Body Snatchers is pulled from Triffids as well? Yeah that it's a plant like organism and obviously now we've got the last of us out there that's also you know evil fungus is what we have to fear.

[01:07:06] But yes Day of the Triffids opens with a guy in the hospital waking up being like what the fuck is going on. So he does Garland shouts that out. He's like I'm a huge fan of that book.

[01:07:17] He's also a huge J.G. Ballard fan and J.G. Ballard had done a lot of post apocalyptic writing you know in his life.

[01:07:24] Yeah so he likes that but the way Garland puts it that I feel like will resonate with you guys the most is this was just a paranoid story coming out of a paranoid time.

[01:07:33] Lots of stuff was happening in this country that felt like the right kind of social subtext or commentary that you could put in a science fiction film. Danny was particularly interested in the issues that had to do with social rage the increase of rage in our society.

[01:07:47] The other thing to mention Britain had just been dealing with mad cow disease.

[01:07:51] I know that sounds crazy but I lived in Britain during the mad cow thing and it was it is sort of a unique societal thing that everyone was like if you eat beef you might go crazy later. Like and I didn't eat beef for like years.

[01:08:06] Like we just couldn't eat beef. And to bring it back to 9-11 I couldn't donate blood in 9-11 because I had studied in England during the 90s. Really? Let people who had lived in England. Yeah. I have never been able to donate blood for that reason.

[01:08:22] I think it's finally over but there's some giant like sort of window like it's like 10 years or something. I have this very distinct memory in the mid 90s going to Taco Bell with my mom and her saying you're no longer allowed to get beef tacos.

[01:08:35] You only chicken tacos now. Right. Wow. There was the huge concern about like cheap beef. It's like fast food beef. And she explained the mad cow thing to me and I was like it's called mad cow and it makes you insane. It sounds like science fiction.

[01:08:49] Yeah it does. I mean as a young child hearing my mother explain it to me in that context while I'm at the counter getting ready to order Taco Bell it felt truly like a like a fucking nightmare dystopian premise where I'm like you take one bite of it.

[01:09:06] Like I thought it would be as quick as what happens to Brendan Gleeson in this movie. Right. One bite of the taco you're saying goodbye to your mom. I love you very much. Stay away from me. Stay away from me. Yes. Yes. The mad cow thing is fascinating.

[01:09:18] That's such an interesting. That makes a lot of sense. I had no idea. It is. I hadn't made that connection either but that is interesting. But so Boyle is not that interested in like zombie movies. He doesn't like the sort of aesthetic of them.

[01:09:31] He doesn't like the lumbering corpses. And so he does of course like that the zombies are running in this. And as you guys had already mentioned he's in the contemporary press is sort of distancing himself from the zombie genre and is more talking about like

[01:09:49] football hooliganism and road rage. It's a movie about society. Post Thatcherism. Right. Living in a society. All this stuff. And you know I guess also the biohazard logo of the movie which is so simple and so effective that was used in all the advertising

[01:10:09] conjures like Ebola and things like that you know other kind of like pandemic stuff that had happened in the 90s that I feel like had become this sort of scary specter.

[01:10:17] It's all it's all it's just a really good mix of things that's hitting at the exact right time which is basically what we were talking about for the first hour of this podcast. Right. Yes. What good groundwork we laid. Good job by us.

[01:10:28] I think you know we didn't talk about fucking you know Captain Crunch or whatever we usually talk about. Yeah yeah exactly. I still got to see that I still haven't seen it. I know we talked about it. Let's watch it with you. I'll say this.

[01:10:40] We were doing it sometime. We were having the debate because we're like settling on our March Madness brackets where we let people vote on what we cover and go right. Patreon we do franchises like that and we were like let's not put Shrek on there.

[01:10:52] We don't want to fucking actually have to sit down and watch the four Shrek movies if you want. Yes yes. And that's not the two Puss in Boots. If you were watching four Shreks with us I would want to do that. I'm not putting you on the spot.

[01:11:06] This isn't a formal offer but I'm like that's the one way I'd want to watch those four movies is through your eyes. I think for David we could cap it at like two.

[01:11:15] He doesn't need to see the third and if I'm if I'm going to watch one I'm going to watch them all. Wait I'm sorry. You're pitching a strap down to a gurney like the monkey at the beginning of 28 days later. Right right.

[01:11:27] David you're you're pitching an escape route to David Rees. You're looking David Rees in the eyes and saying you want to like not finish something. All right. Start to it but sort of like half commit to it.

[01:11:39] So another thing about this movie that we can talk about sort of a little bit later obviously is like the script was always in flux especially the ending and they filmed multiple endings. The film was released in America with two different endings as kind of a gimmick.

[01:11:54] I was wondering about that because I remember seeing two different endings in the theater and I couldn't figure out how that was possible. Yes. If you saw it six times or whatever right. Yeah exactly. There's an alternative ending where Jim dies. Yeah.

[01:12:10] Which is the bleak sort of ending. And then there is a third ending that they didn't actually shoot but isn't like sort of storyboards and you can watch it on the DVD where they like find a scientist in the bunker who maybe has an antidote. Yep.

[01:12:23] I've seen that too right. And he decided that he was basically ripping off near dark which is one of his favorite movies. Catherine Bigelow's your dark which sort of has that that idea in it.

[01:12:33] One of the cleverest things this movie does in my opinion is a cast basically unknown Irish actor named Killian Murphy in the lead role ends up being a pretty good fun who is a great find. He'd been in a movie called Disco Pigs which I saw.

[01:12:48] They saw a play that he had originated the lead in I think. Yes correct. And Disco Pigs is very interesting because it's about these two people who talk in this kind of like weird way and it's got like a clockwork orange sort of slang language. Right. Right. Right.

[01:13:05] Right.

[01:13:05] Elaine Cassidy who I had a huge crush on at the time is the female lead of that and it's a cool movie but he's basically nobody and they're very much going for I feel like let's cast let's not cast stars partly for budget reasons but I think partly just to feel

[01:13:22] like they're trying to speed the kind of you know random and anybody in the movie right. I mean it's it's it's kind of part of it.

[01:13:31] You have Eccleston and Gleeson who come in later and are sort of like familiar faces but your main three leads are all basically unknown at this point in time. They each had one or two credits between them. Naomi Harris had been a child actor. She'd done television. Exactly.

[01:13:46] And she had just been in White Teeth. No White Teeth comes out right after in Britain. White there's an adaptation of Zadie Smith's novel on television which is good which she's really good in. But yeah she was basically unknown. Killian's basically unknown.

[01:13:59] I feel like they're just both very special like you know he's killing is like childlike and kind of beautiful and so striking even in the like low res you know visuals of it and you kind of can't stop looking at him which is really helpful.

[01:14:16] I remember seeing the trailer for this movie and A it was alarming in 2003 in the States to be in a movie theater watching trailers that all look vaguely the same.

[01:14:26] And then this thing coming up and going like why does this look like a dupe of a snuff film at Kim's video. Right.

[01:14:33] Like why is this look like this and then who's this guy at the center of it and he doesn't really look like any other human being you've ever seen. There is something about Killian Murphy that is simultaneously so pretty and so creepy. There's that story.

[01:14:45] Christopher Nolan tells about like he screen tested for Batman and you can watch Killian Murphy's Batman audition to play the Batman Megan the Batman where he's wearing Val Kilmer suit and he was like Nolan was like you know I realized two things immediately.

[01:15:03] The second we started filming the screen test one was he's fundamentally wrong for Batman and two is I'm witnessing one of the best actors of his generation.

[01:15:11] But there was just something about him you have to like weaponize that weird unnerving quality and this character is so reactive in so many ways.

[01:15:21] I just his face popping up in the trailer added to the already a sour sense of alarm I felt from how weird the movie looked. It's so funny his career is so interesting and it is yes he gets the Batman screen test off of this. Yeah.

[01:15:35] And he was the runner up and you can watch the screen test and you're like oh that's interesting but he does seem a little too creepy and I can see why they shifted him over to play the Scarecrow.

[01:15:45] And then you watch the Christian Bale screen test and you're like oh my God like he's he had the entire performance immediately like you know you're like right how do you not. He had the whole thing figured out. Right. Right. Right. Right. But.

[01:15:55] But Killian Murphy it's also like there's something so sensitive about him it's not just the delicacy of his face.

[01:16:00] But there's something so tender in his like spirit to have the lead character you know of your horror movie have that balance where he's simultaneously more sympathetic and a little bit unnerving than most of what you're used to seeing in a horror film.

[01:16:18] Well he plays it plays very very directly against like the idea of like you know like The Walking Dead guy Rick who's like the rugged cop sheriff. Right. Right. Right. Who's exactly the guy you want to be leading your band of humans against the against the zombie hordes.

[01:16:34] This guy's like a bike courier he's got a weird haircut. Yeah. Weighs like 80 pounds. First thing he wants to go do is check in on his mom and his dad which is very sweet and endearing. And he's got these like sleepy ice blue eyes. Right.

[01:16:47] But what you're talking about is something that can often annoy me about the zombie genre which is that kind of like everyone seems to know that they're a zombie. Right.

[01:16:56] And that kind of like everyone seems to know how to use a weapon really fast and all that like where you're like I wouldn't you know just be kind of like checking my chamber and like you know like you know loading my semi auto like right away like I wouldn't know what to do and no one in this movie knows what to do really except like drive cars.

[01:17:13] This is the single best idea in this movie.

[01:17:16] It is the thing that I only in rewatching it now I think truly appreciate it for the first time to have the movie be based around this idea that a guy's been in a coma for 28 days and in those 28 days society's collapsed. Right.

[01:17:30] And you're just jumping to the point of like how things got this bad this quickly everyone else knows the rules but this guy.

[01:17:37] Exactly and obviously the simple effective rapid brilliance of this is the way they shoot London which is sort of legendary at this point where they essentially would just set up a bunch of digital cameras at like five in the morning stop traffic for like two minutes.

[01:17:54] And you know get an empty streetscape right and then run run on like you know and they were doing it without permits. Basically every day of recording started with them trying to get one shot of like a vacant area right.

[01:18:07] This is part of the 9-11 thing David is like Danny Boyle's been like we're shooting on like the Westminster Bridge we're shooting near Whitehall like this is the seat of power in Britain like it's you know where the government is we would have been immediately arrested post.

[01:18:20] Yeah right yeah. It had just been a little bit later. Right. Yeah.

[01:18:24] But it gets credited so much as oh this is the movie that most successfully evokes the uneasy feeling of New York in the immediate wake of 9-11 and he's like 9-11 would have prevented us from getting this.

[01:18:37] And the other thing the movie does and this is probably because of its budget it can't afford the spectacle of World War Z where there's a million extras and zombies is a lot of those wide shots especially after Selena has killed Mark and it's just her and Jim.

[01:18:50] There's just these really wide shots it's like yeah the end of the world is probably be pretty lonely like you know pretty desolate and the and the and the uncanniness of the fact that the streets are not littered with the bodies of the dead.

[01:19:06] It's not just that society has collapsed it's also like the rapture like everybody's just disappeared.

[01:19:10] For this guy waking up he's not waking up to like a massacre it's it's right on easy there's something poetic and beautiful about it but it's lonely and sad and just immediately off putting it does feel like an odd dream you would have.

[01:19:24] I mean it's very similar to the vanilla sky opening where it's like something's fundamentally off in reality right now. The vanilla sky opening is a good magic trick as well what did the empty Times Square thing is so cool.

[01:19:36] And is another thing that comes out after 9 11 and never could have been shot after 9 11. An interesting quote about one of our former subjects Danny Boyle says Kubrick would make his films through the studio system but he worked with so few people his crews were so tiny.

[01:19:51] That's why Warner Brothers allowed him to shoot for so long because day by day didn't cost that much like.

[01:19:56] And that's what Boyle says like he was trying to do the same kind of thing of like yeah you know like I'm going to take my time over here but like we're like we're only working for a few hours a day and it's only a few people like.

[01:20:08] Yeah there's not a lot of people on payroll this isn't like some massive production where every fucking day we go over schedule or whatever it's a disaster for the studio. Yeah right.

[01:20:17] The other thing that is it's just I love it so much it London much like New York everyone on earth has an image of what it looks like in their head and to see it look different is just is just the coolest thing in the world.

[01:20:31] It's so it's so desolate and scary and like it's so evocative. Yeah it's it's it's it's an incredible opening and like the trailer would lead with this and it just immediately grabbed you.

[01:20:43] But I have a question about this can I ask you a question about that opening scene when he comes out the scene of him looking at all the flyers the missing persons flyers that has to be post 9-11.

[01:20:54] So so yes so Griffin the movie did not start did not film sorry did not finish before 9-11 it started shooting on September 1st 2001 and they shot all of this stuff immediately.

[01:21:07] And oh wow 11 happens obviously a week and a half later and Boyle does say like it changed the movie it became about how we felt vulnerable to something happening became about how vulnerable cities are.

[01:21:21] And we set out to make this film about social rage and it became a more complex response so obviously the film the script had already been written the films been planned but it is at least in their head a little bit.

[01:21:32] Right place right time it's seeping into the DNA sure yeah the missing persons thing has yeah that's like because those were all I remember being downtown after 9-11 and that stuff was everywhere you guys must remember that too if you were there.

[01:21:43] Yeah yeah yeah weird time yeah I lived in London obviously and I yeah I had weird sort of feelings about it like missing being in New York like you know I felt like guilty that I wasn't there it was very strange.

[01:21:59] You know I have other friends who had left New York before 9-11 and said the same thing that they felt really guilty and they weirdly you know.

[01:22:08] And they felt like they had betrayed the city or something it's also got a Mark Wahlberg approach where he believes if he had been here would have gone down like that oh right that's why he feels guilty he thinks he could have stopped it.

[01:22:19] Yeah I do the thing I remember most profoundly is the first time I went to New York after 9-11 was in the spring so like April 2002 and my parents had worked downtown because well especially my mom was a city hall reporter so she worked downtown right by the trade center.

[01:22:35] And when the first time we went down there they were like it's so bright because the towers were gone it was so right the sun was suddenly like shining down and they were like they were trying to tell me like you don't have to go down there you can just go down there and you can just go down there.

[01:22:48] And I was like you don't understand it's like really different just atmospherically like anyway.

[01:22:54] So they're making this movie on these digital cameras that are so new and they've got this kind of anarchic production approach I don't mean anarchy like chaotic I mean this kind of just like you know guerrilla style we're gonna run and go. Yeah DIY.

[01:23:11] Yeah it's the dogma thing it's it's a it's sort of a punk response to what how film was was seen and how it could be made yeah.

[01:23:20] And like this is and like the way they all the quotes in this dossier are just like it's true kind of like they're a cadre they all are just like we all cared about this so much we you know there was only a few of us on the crew so it's like a real you know band of brothers thing like there's no hierarchy we were all in it together.

[01:23:38] So that's pretty cool.

[01:23:39] Which I think when you're talking about those tiny crew and the DIY and it being our anarchic like so the music that is that plays as Jim wanders the empty streets of London and it kind of builds and it builds this incredible crescendo of guitars and cellos.

[01:23:56] The original music was by Godspeed you black emperor. It's called East Eastings. Right which is like a which is like an instrumental post-rock kind of band and they are very political. They're a Canadian right they're Canadian bands yeah. The most political nation on earth.

[01:24:14] Lift your skinny fists like antennas to heaven. Yeah I had that record. Oh sure yeah you know it yeah. I remember you know the the hands the LP has the hands on it.

[01:24:24] And so Danny Boyle really wanted to use their music and they agree they don't usually like license stuff because they're anti-capitalists and they agreed but then once I think Fox got involved as an investor or distributor then they're like you can't use our songs as a bait and switch.

[01:24:40] Why is this fucking Pepsi can being promoted here in this movie? This is not us and I think I think that's one of the reasons it's so hard to see now is the music rights or clearance. I think that's because this movie is impossible to stream right now.

[01:24:53] Now it was available recently ish so I don't really know what the vibe is. You know what's weird?

[01:24:59] I got this and 28 weeks later as a bundle on iTunes within the last couple of months in anticipation of doing this series and then I went to check iTunes and it was missing. Right this is the thing about DCM they can just take it away.

[01:25:15] Just take it away. I bought it. I bought it and then I went to where my library linked to other things so then when I went on to like Amazon or Voodoo it was there. But it's weird how recently this movie has been stricken from iTunes. Yeah.

[01:25:32] I have the two disc set with 28 weeks later that's what I have. Yes I have that too. This is a pretty absurd movie to watch on Blu-ray. Yes. Blu-ray is like high def. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like in 1p basically. Right.

[01:25:53] Sometimes it feels like it's in like 1p or like 2i. We shot in binary. Yeah.

[01:25:59] It's kind of it's the way we're so I feel like our eyes are now so adjusted to these like 4k streaming websites that can just like produce these relatively impressive images that we kind of take for granted where you know like you know or whatever.

[01:26:13] So there's more of a shock to it now maybe. Watching this feels like when we've watched like the director's cut of Swing Shift or like the musical cut of I'll Do Anything where you're like this is like a VHS that was smuggled out.

[01:26:27] This thing is like so degraded it's hard to even make out what you're seeing. Which is part of the magic of it right? Yeah. Like it feels like you're watching some secret thing yeah. Yeah same with Night of the Living Dead being in black and white. Yes.

[01:26:42] It's that you have this distancing dreamy filter as opposed to like World War Z which is probably shot on some of the nicest cameras in the world with a trillion dollar budget.

[01:26:50] There's only there's a it looks too nice to really get under your skin at least for me. This is also coming at the exact point that like George Lucas and Michael Mann and some of these guys are standing up and going like you can shoot video.

[01:27:08] Video is becoming high definition enough that you can shoot video and play that in a movie theater and people will not revolt.

[01:27:14] And so we're like right on the precipice Attack of the Clones has come out but otherwise like the precipice of these people were gonna start to experiment with high def video and turning into like a valid medium and a valid format at least.

[01:27:27] And then Danny Boyle is like doing the exact opposite thing where he's like scale it back pull it back home video camera yeah. Right. Obviously there is a sequel to this film 28 weeks later which we are going to talk about on our Patreon.

[01:27:42] Boyle does not direct it because he doesn't want to do the same thing twice although he does do some first AD stuff on it. I don't know if I knew that. I thought he directed the opening sequence. The legendary. Yeah right.

[01:27:56] Which is really cool from what I remember. Which is the best part which is exhilarating and terrifying and the best part of the movie. And obviously like Robert Carlyle is in it you know it's got like sort of Danny Boyle favorites.

[01:28:07] We are going to be covering it on Patreon. Yes we will. But they have Garland and Boyle have both been talking about doing a 28 months later. Yes. There's some idea they have that they like.

[01:28:17] They had a script at the time I think weirdly 28 weeks was seen as a disappointment even though it outgrows 28 days but the expectations have gotten so much higher.

[01:28:27] And they had the script they wanted to do and Danny Boyle was like I like the idea so much I might have to come back to direct it.

[01:28:34] But then the excitement had sort of gone away and now recently Boyle has been saying like I really like that script I'd like to do something with it.

[01:28:40] I can't imagine what is happening in pop culture right now also that would make them think these kind of things would be relevant. Nothing. What are you guys talking about? What's that Ben? Sorry. What are you talking about? I don't understand. Ben is infected. Currently infected.

[01:29:03] Everyone calm down. Killy Murphy was like well I can't do this movie anymore because it's been more than 28 months. I'm like old now. I don't look the same. And Sims and I were texting about this where it's like oh it's crazy that he could do 28 years later now.

[01:29:19] It's getting close to that because this film is now basically 20 years old. Yeah. Obviously 28 months later would just be a couple years later. Right. But doing 28 years would be interesting. Yeah so maybe that's what they do. I don't know. It is amazing how it's just crazy.

[01:29:37] Obviously Nolan blows him up and uses him plenty and that's part of his and Boyle uses him again in Sunshine obviously. But like he's going to be the lead of a gigantic movie this summer right? Playing J. Robert Oppenheimer for Christopher Nolan.

[01:29:53] He's done like six seasons of a global blockbuster TV show. Is he the most famous he's ever been now because of Peaky Blinders? Is that true? Yes it is right? Peaky Blinders. Have you seen Peaky Blinders David at all? You might enjoy it. Those British gangsters.

[01:30:14] I don't think so. That is what Killy Murphy is most involved in. It's old timey British gangsters right? Brummie gangsters from the 19-0s. Like gentleman gangsters. I watched half an episode with Emily and just been like this isn't for me. Peaky Blinders.

[01:30:29] Tom Hardy plays a rabbi in a few seasons. I was going to say. There's some drop ins in that one. Anyway let's talk about the plot of the film a little bit. Obviously we've been talking about some of our favorite stuff in the film.

[01:30:39] But do you guys like the opening, the pre-Killy Murphy sequence with the infected chimpanzee and the panicked doctor played by British comedian David Schneider and like all this stuff? And extreme animal rights activists. Who were such a thing back then. And they don't exist anymore. The 12 monkeys guys.

[01:31:00] It's just gone. It's just gone from the culture. It doesn't exist anymore. Ben clearly someone hasn't seen the last two Jurassic World movies. Go on David. You're right I haven't.

[01:31:12] But like wasn't that such a trope in the 90s where people were like oh left wing terrorists who are you know crunchy. Yeah Earth Liberation Army. Yeah. Yeah. Earth Liberation Front and stuff like that.

[01:31:23] So I made a list watching all these zombie movies of some of the common tropes and zombie movies which are so obvious that you don't even need to spend too much time listing them.

[01:31:33] But it's really interesting how many of them 28 Days Later subverts or upends or just gets out of the way entirely. And one of the cool things about this movie that I had forgotten is that it opens with this montage, and this is very common in zombie movies,

[01:31:47] news montage of society falling apart. And these montages, like in World War Z, you have the classic thing where Brad Pitt is making waffles or pancakes for his kids at breakfast and is distracted by what's on the TV, which is plague is making everyone go crazy.

[01:32:03] Always love to have the ominous background news information that you can pick up on before the character does. In Zack Snyder's remake of Dawn of the Dead, it opens with news montage of crazy zombie violence and a Johnny Cash song. It's really effective.

[01:32:21] 28 Days Later is not subverting that because it came out before it, but it's interesting that when you see the opening news montage of violent imagery, if you know you're watching a zombie movie, you think this is the classic trope of,

[01:32:32] look at society falling apart because of the zombies. Yes. But it's not that. It's just the news. It's just another day watching the news for this poor monkey because they're trying to enrage the monkey, right? So the very first shot speaks to the fact of,

[01:32:47] oh, you think zombies and humans are different? Turns out they share a lot in common. They love fighting and killing. This is a thing I remember not being, even though this is the first bit of information you basically get in the entire movie,

[01:33:03] I don't remember this being part of the marketing. I don't remember this being part of interviews. They were downplaying so much how much it was a zombie movie or wasn't a zombie movie. It felt a little mind blowing when you're just used to the rules of like,

[01:33:18] it's infection, it's a disease, it's this and that. To have this movie open with, they showed a monkey too much violence and he got so angry. Right. Then eco-terrorists freed him and he started biting people and now the mad monkey made everyone go insane.

[01:33:35] I mean, between blaming everything on the media and then some left-wing eco-terrorists showing up and bringing about the destruction of the world, you think it was written by like William F. Buckley Jr. or something. Like it really does start off as what could be read

[01:33:47] as like a really conservative movie. On paper, it reads that way, yes. Is the idea that they're trying to reverse engineer something that they're like, if we can find out what causes rage, we can cure it? Is that the idea of this experiment?

[01:34:02] I don't know what they're trying to do. I think it's just a foolish fucking thought experiment. Like let's see what rage does to a brain. It's very similar to what they do to create Blanka in the Street Fighter movie, of course. Of course, yes, yes.

[01:34:18] They also show him the news, right. Or with Blanka, they just sort of show him like history channel Hitler documentaries or whatever, but same idea. Yes, I don't know. I read it as them not necessarily having an end goal

[01:34:35] other than like, let's just see what this does to a brain. It is funny that when they come in to try to free him, the scientist knows exactly what has happened. He's like, I know who you are, I know what you wanna do.

[01:34:48] Can I ask a question to David as someone who was living in England? You were probably living in England at the height of what was known, at least in the States, as cool Britannia. This is true, absolutely. Because of all the hot artists

[01:35:00] coming out of the Satchy Gallery and associated scenes. Damien Hirst, but also Blur and also Tony Blair? Oh, maybe not. One of the coolest third-way leaders we've ever had. Yeah, exactly. Are these monkeys vitrines that they're kept in, is that a reference to Damien Hirst's vitrines

[01:35:20] where he would cut sheep in half and put sharks and formaldehyde? I never thought of that, but that possibly, it does sort of feel like the kind of thing that- I was wondering if that was a little, right. It is funny how in England,

[01:35:35] the sort of young British artists who you're referring to right now. The YBAs. Yes, the YBAs. So Damien Hirst and Tracy Emin and Angus Farris, blah, blah. In the 90s when I was a kid, it was like this thing in Britain of like, should we tolerate this?

[01:35:55] Like Britain was like, huh, everyone's excited that he put a shark in formaldehyde, but like, should he go to jail for this? Like, is this good for Britain or bad? You know, like there's this kind of constant boring debate of like, should government money sponsor such nonsense?

[01:36:11] Which culminated in one of the Turner Prize winners, which I remember very well and I did attend, was just the Turner Prize being Britain's like number one art prize, was just lights turning on and off in a room. And it's by Martin Creed,

[01:36:28] it's called the Lights Going On and Off. And it was one of those things where like, sort of buddy-duddy Brit, you know, newspaper columnists were like, well, we've gone too. We can't just be turning lights on and off and calling this art. Like, this is outrageous.

[01:36:45] Tracy Eman or Eminer, however you say her name, wasn't her piece just like her bed? Just like a crappy bed in the corner of a gallery? It is very, very cool. I have seen it. It's called My Bed. It was exhibited at the Kate Gallery.

[01:36:56] Such a good name for a work of art. And it is indeed her bed. It was, I think, a Turner nominee. It didn't win. And it's like a disheveled bed, but it has like, you know, condoms and underwear. You know, like it's this very like raw

[01:37:11] and kind of confrontational piece. Like that's one of those things where you're like, this is uncomplicated. Of course this is art. Like this is provoking such a, you know, incredible reaction in you. The light's turning on and off. You know, you're kind of like,

[01:37:27] well the lights are turning on and off. I am thinking about this. I'm not sure. I'm not sure to what extent I'm thinking about what, you know, anything more than is this art? You know what I mean? But still, it's interesting. I love all that stuff.

[01:37:41] I was living in Boston when all that stuff was happening. And I once actually, I can't believe I did this, but I once took the bus from Boston to New York to go to the Gagosian Gallery to see the Damien Hirst,

[01:37:52] his first big American show with the shark and the sheep and the dots. Was the Peepee Jesus part of that show? That was Damien Hirst, right? No, that's Andre Serrano, Piss Christ. That was the, and that predated, that was our own version of,

[01:38:08] that was the National Endowment for the Arts controversy because he had received an NEA grant. And my former, my home state of North Carolina, our former Senator Jesse Helms was, although a huge patron and supporter of avant-garde urine-based artwork, actually kicked up a lot of dust about that.

[01:38:28] I mean, I just remember like five months of the New York Post having a field day. Just every day was a different front page story. Oh yeah, that was like manna from heaven for the New York Post. Like they probably gave him a grant to do it. Yes.

[01:38:45] There was, you know, the Holy Virgin Mary, which was the painting. Chris Ophelia, or whatever his name is. And that was a gift to Giuliani because Giuliani made a huge stink about that when that show was up at the Brooklyn Museum. Yes.

[01:38:59] And then the other thing I should mention if we're gonna talk about all this is that Tracey Emin actually lost to Steve McQueen, the British film director who initially was like an avant-garde artist. That turned her prize that year. Steve McQueen, another really cool artist of the 90s,

[01:39:17] which, you know, his early stuff like Bear is really, really cool. If anyone's seen Steve McQueen's Bear. The whole thing, I went to school very close to the Tate Modern, which opened in the late 90s. Well, opened in 2000. It was a millennium project. They turned this, you know,

[01:39:30] everyone probably knows it now, it's a big museum. They turned this power station into a modern art museum. And it had this turbine hall. It has this turbine hall that's this massive space that can have these massive art installations in it.

[01:39:43] And I would just go all the time at like lunch and just hang out in like, fuck, what's his name? What's the guy who does the really big stuff? I'll think of his name. Richard Serra? Jeff Koons? No, I'll come up with it.

[01:39:57] Not him, although he's cool too. No, he's not. No, is he not cool? Is he bad? I can't remember. What does he do again? He does the big ass amable balloons. The balloons, yeah. Those things can go fuck themselves.

[01:40:11] You guys are out on the balloons, but they're so shiny. I mean, the balloons are amazing objects and the fabrication is incredible. But I think of Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst as just so profoundly cynical. Yes. It's like their entire career now is to trick hedge fund managers

[01:40:26] into thinking they have taste while running off with their money. And it's just like, there's so much. And they also don't even make any of the artwork. Yeah, right. Just outsourcing everything to like fabricators. Yeah. Ben gets it. Hell yeah.

[01:40:41] The person I'm trying to think of is Ofer. Ofer Eliasson, if anyone knows him. He did something called the weather project in 2003 where he installed a giant sun in the turbine hall and turned out the lights. That looked incredible. And you put a giant mirror on the ceiling

[01:41:01] and you would walk around looking up and you could see yourself and you could sort of like walk without running into anyone because you were looking at this mirror a thousand feet and it was so fucking cool. It's like sunshine. It's like the Danny Boyle movie, Sunshine.

[01:41:13] Yeah, man. Anyway, so love that time. 28 Days Later definitely has that electric energy, right? With a lot of Danny Boyle stuff does that kind of cool Britannia. Right, yeah. I mean, it's so much of what we've pulled up

[01:41:29] in dossier quotes in all the movies we've covered so far is that Danny Boyle thought British movies needed to be cool. That there was not an excitement in the way you had in British music and art

[01:41:42] in the film area and he wanted to bring that energy to it. It's what is so baffling about the latter half of his career for so many people, I think, that he then takes this very sincere swerve and millions, of course, being his followup to this

[01:41:56] being the one where people are like, Danny Boyle didn't direct this. What? This is like some cute kids movie. Like what? He didn't make this. Like Danny Boyle, Danny Boyle. There must be another guy. Anyway, so all right, so there's the monkey.

[01:42:09] The monkey gets out and then we cut to Cillian Murphy. He's nude in bed, very British opening, I feel like, where they're like, this ain't Hollywood, baby. You're gonna see a soft penis. Wedding taco flopping around. Yeah, right, you know, like this is real.

[01:42:23] Although I don't really understand, what are the circumstances in which he was left naked in a hospital bed in a coma and then just kind of abandoned? I read on a website about zombie movie tropes when they go through this movie one by one

[01:42:38] and identify everything in this movie that has happened in another movie. And one thing on the website was a subtle detail that I didn't pick up on, even though I've watched it so many times, which is that whoever left him in that hospital bed,

[01:42:53] well, they didn't take the time to write an explanatory note or to put them in a smock or anything, but they did close the blinds to his door so the zombies wouldn't be able to see him because you see him opening blinds.

[01:43:03] And they also locked him in the room and slipped the key under the door. Because remember, he finds the key to let himself out. So they did take some precautions on his behalf, but maybe they were pressed for time. Also as to why he's naked,

[01:43:17] his nurse was Shirley Henderson's character from Trainspotting. She wanted to see what he was working with when he was passed out and then found it very disappointing. Continuity within the universe. Exactly. But yeah, so he wakes up and there's this whole extended sequence

[01:43:32] of him wandering around central London. And then the first, I feel like the first infected human he finds, he comes across as the priest, right? The priest is the first zombie who tries to kill him. Yes. But that image when he walks into the church

[01:43:46] and he just sees the ground strewn with bodies and because of the lo-fi nature of the cinematography. Yeah, what am I looking at? Right, right. It's this thing I love that like every image in this movie becomes a bit of an abstraction

[01:44:00] where you're fighting to understand what you're seeing. And it also makes it harder to identify who is infected at first and who is not because you're never getting a clear look at anything. Right, yeah, yeah. The graffiti, the end is fucking nigh. You like that? Yeah.

[01:44:19] I like whoever spray painted that was like, fuck it man, like really, you know? Like I'm gonna do this, but who fucking cares? This is my lasting legacy as being like, eh. The flyers is the other thing. David already mentioned that,

[01:44:33] the eeriness of the flyers papered all over everything. I will say that he could have spent a little more time reading the newspaper that he picks up and glances at it. Yeah, he sort of picks it up and throws it out, yeah.

[01:44:45] It's weird, he goes straight to the funny pages and then like the movie listings and then he throws it out. He's like, eh, Curtis really has it this week. Love to shout out Curtis. Will that kid's hat ever fall off? Reeves, you're talking about all the like

[01:45:00] conscious subversions in this movie, right? Yeah, I mean, if you think about this being the first fast zombies movie, you have the sequence, he walks into the church, he sees these dead bodies, some of them start moving, you don't quite understand what's happening.

[01:45:14] And because the zombies in this movie aren't green skinned, they don't have like clear obvious rotting flesh wounds. Right. And the cinematography abstracts it so much that like the door is throwing open and this priest walking in really fast. You wouldn't necessarily think this was a zombie.

[01:45:36] Right, yeah. It feels like something's wrong with this guy. Right, he's traumatized or he's hysterical, he's warning him away, like get out of here, right. But just the basic clip at which he's moving is going against the way we're wired to see threats in these movies. Yeah, totally.

[01:45:53] At first blush, I would say. And I love it, I love it. I love, because it is such a classic zombie trope, usually that the guy is coming at you slowly and you're kind of like, hey man, are you okay? Right, and they just keep lumbering towards you.

[01:46:07] Just like, and this, he has to make the instant decision to bean this guy, you know, and then he's immediately like, I shouldn't have done that. And then obviously. I love how quickly like the Catholic guilt kicks in. Right, right, right. Yeah.

[01:46:23] And he encounters Selena, who's played by Naomi Harris and Mark Noah Huntley, not an actor I know that well. Who is he? Yeah, anyway. And they go to Deptford, which is in sort of, you know, whatever, Southeast London to see his family who died by suicide essentially

[01:46:41] and left him a note being like, you know, we didn't wanna wake you up essentially. Right, yes. That's such a heartbreaking thing to have someone like walk into a room and witness what would be one of the most awful, unimaginable thing, right?

[01:46:56] And everyone around him is going like, you're really fucking lucky. You're lucky that this is what you get to see. Right, yeah, yeah. And I'm such a sucker for these tropes. Like I love this sort of, you know, the time shift, right?

[01:47:11] Where he's like, what are you talking about? And Naomi Harris is like, I've only been doing this for 28 days, but I've completely transformed, right? Like my personality is hardened and like, you know, I'm this kind of like spiky road warrior now. You know, it's also what's basically scary

[01:47:27] about the idea of having a coma, going into a coma for any reason. Yes. Is like, what if I wake up to an unrecognizable world? And unrecognizable can mean anything. Like, you know, my parents got divorced. I don't recognize this world I'm waking up into.

[01:47:44] And then this is just such an extreme shift of every single norm he knew and believed and that everyone has adjusted to this world so quickly that the basic tenets of humanity have shifted. But Mark getting the wound, right?

[01:48:02] And how quickly, where we're so used to in zombie movies, when someone reveals that they're infected or someone is hiding that they're infected and it's found out, there's this belabored scene of people being in conflict with their own emotions. Can I do it? Right.

[01:48:17] And sometimes the infection, you know, it lasts over the course of hours or days and you watch and it usually happens much later. I just want to keep track of the tropes that are being subverted here.

[01:48:29] If I can backtrack, the one thing that him being in a coma and waking up to an empty London denies us is what is always my favorite moment in a zombie movie, which is the slow realization that something's not quite right. Like, what are all those ambulance sirens,

[01:48:44] which has happened in World War Z, which is also very much a 9-11 New York response. Yeah. Yeah. Like, why is that person, why is that old lady beating the shit out of that other person with a cane and eating their head? Like, that can't be normal.

[01:48:57] We kind of are dropped down into the middle of it. Like, all that action has already taken place and is over with. And then with Mark getting infected, which is Jim's fault, right? I mean, we know that he just woke up,

[01:49:08] but he shouldn't have lit a candle in his house because that's what leads the zombies to bust through. There's two subversions at once, which I think are really exciting. One is that you turn instantly. Like, there's no waiting around to see what happens.

[01:49:22] The second is that she kills him instantly. It's genuinely shocking. That's the big thing. Usually in zombie movies, a beloved member of your team- I'm sorry! Ah, you know, yeah. There's that, but also usually if one of the good guys has bitten it, it happens like two thirds

[01:49:37] of the way through the movie, which happens in this case with Frank, obviously, who's the much more important character than Mark. But still, watching this for the first time, he gets bit and she just immediately chops him with a machete and one fell swoop.

[01:49:49] It's like, oh my gosh, this is really exciting. The stakes are really high. This is not gonna be like a regular zombie movie. And speaking to the, like, are we the real monsters thing, for Jim, that's terrifying. Yeah, he's freaked out. To see.

[01:50:02] Right, and that she's desensitized to it, that it's just like, well, I know what needs to be done. Let me grab my axe, let me hack him to bits. I wonder if the machete, again, this is where my head was at

[01:50:12] after reading the Samantha Power book about genocide, which focuses a lot on the Rwandan genocide and the insane thing about that genocide, which is that between 500 and 800,000 Rwandans were killed by their neighbors by hand, just with machetes. And the machete is a really iconic association

[01:50:32] for that particular genocide. Every genocide has its own mechanics, its own techniques of death and erasure. And I wonder if that was a specific choice to Gifford. I mean, machetes are also just very tough and I know they're cool like samurai swords,

[01:50:46] but I was wondering if using a machete was a reference to the Rwandan genocide. Because again, because where my head was at when I watched this movie, I was like, boom, Rwandan genocide movie reference. Like, this movie is gonna be insane.

[01:51:01] You know, like Henry Kissinger's gonna show up and get his head blown off. This is gonna be the best movie ever made. Like, I was so primed for it. Imagine if that was the end of this film. Yeah. I'm trying to remember exactly how they get there.

[01:51:12] So you guys might not know, so Brendan Gleeson's character, Frank, and his daughter, Hannah, they're living in Balfron Tower, which do you guys know what Balfron Tower is? That's not the one that burned, is it? No, it is not. Okay. No, no, no, that's a very bad building,

[01:51:26] a very poorly designed building. Balfron Tower is like one of the most famous brutalist pieces of architecture in the world. It's a listed building in Britain. It's like, you know, protected because it's so special. If you guys look it up, it's a very cool looking building.

[01:51:40] But obviously because it was brutalist architecture, it was sort of frowned upon at the time, but it's so striking. And it looks like this spaceship that fucking landed, you know, just like, like, you know, just a little plummeted down to London. And you guys,

[01:51:57] it was designed by a very famous architect called Erno Goldfinger, who Ian Fleming hated so much. No way. He hated him so much that he named Goldfinger the villain after him. He hated him so much, he did the biggest favor possible. He immortalized him. Yeah, he made it.

[01:52:14] I mean, I will, Ian Fleming was also probably thinking like, I mean, that guy's got a pretty good last name. Goldfinger does kind of roll off the tongue. But anyway, so, but yeah, how do they get there? How do they encounter them? I don't know.

[01:52:28] They have like the lights up in the windows. They have Christmas lights that are twinkling and they go there and then they find that they've been barricaded by shopping carts. Right. Which is very ad busters. And then they go up and they get chased up the stairs

[01:52:41] and Hannah is reluctant to let them in. And then she relents when Frank gives her permission. He says, no, we can trust these guys to let them in. Can I say one thing about this opening sequence? Anything. This kind of bothers me. The thing to keep in mind,

[01:52:55] and this becomes especially relevant once they reach the military compound is, and I feel so crass saying this, but it's kind of like, guys, it's only been 28 days. Like you really have nothing to eat. Have nothing to eat but candy bars and soda pop?

[01:53:10] Like it hasn't even been a month. There's a weird kind of like time accordion thing where in some ways it feels much longer than 28 days. Well, that's like what happened to me when lockdown started and I was like, oh boy, I really don't shop well.

[01:53:26] Two days in you're just have nothing but soda and Snickers. My fridge is only different holiday Reese's shapes. Right, yeah. All right, maybe it was maybe bad planning. They're caught off guard. These guys are caught off guard. I mean, Frank is a cab driver.

[01:53:41] I do like that because it's sort of like a magic London thing of like he has a kind of a robust vehicle and also he knows. He has the knowledge. Every street, he has the knowledge, which is what London cabbies have to learn. It's called the knowledge.

[01:53:57] Do you know that Griffin? I love dropping my English. If you wanna be a black cab driver in England, you have to do something called the knowledge, which is you basically drive around London streets for like two years because London has no geography that makes any sense.

[01:54:12] Yeah, I forgot that the knowledge was the term, but I do know about this because it's constantly invoked as the thing that New York cab drivers are not required to do. Oh, right. Because obviously New York's geography is simpler,

[01:54:22] but like it is crazy in London where you're getting, you know, I lived on Burley Road and I would get in and I'd be like, I'm going to Burley Road and they'd be like, which Burley Road? And I'd be like, NW5. That was my zip code.

[01:54:32] And they'd postcode and they'd be like, oh yeah. You know, and it's just like, there's 1 million streets in London. There's no like arteries or no grids or anything. It's just like, yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah, I know how to get there.

[01:54:44] They just need to know it all like the back of their hand. Isn't it wild? It's not like Brendan Gleeson is young in this movie. He's obviously already in dad mode. It is now odd to see- He's probably in his 40s. Yeah. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:55:01] It's odd to see him on screen now without a single fleck of white in his beard or hair. Like, I feel like, I mean, he's just, Brendan Gleeson looks incredible always and all the different phases of Brendan Gleeson are incredible. But like his weird elder statesman phase now,

[01:55:18] where like the contrast between like the hyper bright orange and then the white and gray in his beard and his hair is so fascinating. And this you're just like, oh, you're just like perfectly ginger. He's a lovely ginger man. Is he the guy who's in Banshees of Inisheeran?

[01:55:33] Yes. Yes, yes. His first Oscar nomination. Long overdue. I can't see that movie because literally one of my other recurring nightmares is that all my friends secretly hate me. And my understanding is that's the plot of the movie. And it's like- Oh, you will hate this one.

[01:55:47] A little bit, a little bit. I can't see that. What if your friend one day was like, I don't want to hang out with you. Literally had that dream last night now that I remember it. Right, yeah. Has Brendan Gleeson been reading your dream journal reads

[01:55:56] and like fucking one by one? Your other dream is being stuck in prison with a nice bear who forces you to make marmalade. Yeah. He stars in every movie about my nightmares. Yeah. I'm gonna sue him. He's also of course in AI, artificial intelligence. What? He's the Fleshfare.

[01:56:16] Remember he's the Fleshfare guy. Oh yeah. Do not be confused. This is a robot. Oh my God, I need to keep my distance from this guy. Yeah. Yeah. Thank God his acting lesson will not be passed on through errors that I might stumble upon in TV and movies.

[01:56:31] He's got many, many errors of course. I have even worse news for you. What? You're forgetting that he played the figure of your all time greatest nightmare, Donald J. Trump. He did, that's right. In The Comey Rule on Showtime. Oh my God. Did he?

[01:56:53] You know how they're now making a movie, they're making a movie or is it a Showtime series or something about Prince Andrew blowing the fucking Jeffrey Epstein interview, right? Yes. Like that's what the movie's about. It's just about when Prince Andrew shat the bed

[01:57:08] on TV like two years ago. I think we need to stop it with the like, we're gonna make a movie just about Trump firing James Comey. But that speaks to our conversation earlier about the difference between movies that are literally just about the news

[01:57:28] versus movies that sort of anticipate deeper trends or some tectonic gestalt stuff, right? Yeah. Like when The Comey Rule came out and no one watched it. That doesn't look anything like him, that's crazy. It is so funny that they're like, I don't know,

[01:57:47] middle-aged actor put the wig on him, get a spray tan, job done. Sims, I'll remind you, I called it in a fucking episode. Like 2016, 2017. You did, you said he could do Trump. We were talking about is there any actor who you could actually cast to dramatically play Trump

[01:58:03] not as a parody who would work? But like really- And I said, I think Gleeson is probably the closest. That's an insane image. Have you seen The Comey Rule? I've seen clips, his performance seems okay, but like everyone else on the planet,

[01:58:18] I went, why the fuck would I want to watch this? Right. You need to hear this retold in a fake style stretched over too many hours. Yeah, he's like any esteemed, obviously he's Irish, he's not British, but like any esteemed actor from that part of the world,

[01:58:37] he's played fucking Winston Churchill at this point. He's played a couple of famous Irish people. He played Roddy Doyle, he played Michael Collins. He played in a really good movie, The General. He played Martin Cahill, the very famous- Played Knuckles McGinty. The Dublin monster, played Knuckles McGinty,

[01:58:52] that Irish hero. Damien Hirst. So it is, I feel like at this point, he's in that, in the early nineties, he's in Braveheart, Michael Collins, The General, like in these interesting Irish movies, the Butcher Boy, he's really, he pops in that as well.

[01:59:09] And that he had just shifted to the sort of like, okay, Hollywood likes this guy as a sort of 20 minutes character, Mission Impossible 2, AI, Gangs of New York, things like that, Cold Mountain, right? Like that's where he's at right now. So good in Gangs of New York.

[01:59:26] He's incredible. That's the moment where I remember being like, who the fuck is this guy? Like him in this movie, I think he's a really warm presence. It's a good counterpoint to Naomi Harris because she's so like flinty and intense. He's a little more regular, you know,

[01:59:41] like you kind of need him. You need the sort of like, okay, can we calm down for a second? Like, this movie is so stressful. Like, yes, love a creme de menthe, yes. His mere energy needs to shift her entire worldview.

[01:59:58] I mean, you have that scene where Naomi Harris says like, he made me believe there is a thing worth fighting for again just because he is able to maintain some sense of, I don't know, I don't want to say enjoyment in life, but he's finding value in life

[02:00:15] and still being alive and in his relationship with his daughter. And it's like, there are no big showy scenes where he has to like sell that. It's just basically in the essence of this man. But I do feel like David in your zombie trope list,

[02:00:31] the sort of lovable guy turning and being like, get away from me, get away from me. Like that's big on the tropes, right? Yeah, and this is one of the better examples of it. That whole sequence is really affecting. It's so affecting, yeah. It's really nice.

[02:00:45] I just remember the entire audience gasping when the blood goes into his eye. Yeah, it's that, it's like, oh God, no. We like this guy. We're like, I figured, but ah, God damn it. And it's like, it's such a, he couldn't have done anything differently.

[02:01:04] Well, he could've worn some safety goggles. They all could have, frankly. You know what? You know what? Fair enough. But that gets back to our armor point. But it's like, it's not like he failed to recognize a guy lurking behind him. Right, yeah, right, yeah. No, it's tragic.

[02:01:17] It's a nice, it's really well done and it's, yeah. And the aesthetic is cool again. This sort of weird shipping, deserted shipping container place, right? Like it's also kind of creepy. Right. And like urban apocalypse vibes, you know. The supermarket sequence is so good too

[02:01:37] because it's like the first time where they make the collapse of society feel a little bit fun. Huge trope in zombie movies, the shopping spree. Sometimes it happens at the mall. If you're, if you're, it's Dawn of the Dead. It happens at the mall.

[02:01:53] Is that when the granddaddy song is playing? The like, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. Yeah, I love that song. Yeah. You got that shot of him with the Granny Smith apples. Irradiated, he says. That's something I would really enjoy doing in the apocalypse.

[02:02:09] Shopping? Yeah. Have you not, have you not thought of that guys? Yeah, like going to the mall and getting all of the clothes you've ever wanted to have. I was gonna say- You can do that now and they don't pursue shoplifters. It's part of their loss.

[02:02:24] There is no loss prevention strategy anymore. You don't have to wait for the apocalypse. Walgreens and every single item is behind glass and needs six keys now. Next time they make a zombie movie and someone goes to loot the store and everything is locked up,

[02:02:36] like even the toothpaste, that's amazing. That's funny. Yes, yes. No, I have a feeling I would get arrested. I don't know if that, I know what you're alluding to. I have a feeling I would get arrested. You'd be the one.

[02:02:49] You would get arrested even in the zombie apocalypse. Zombie apocalypse, I can't believe it. You'd be like, all right, this is for me. And there's like the one last mall cop who's like, look, I don't have any purpose in this world except for this.

[02:03:01] Yeah, it's like that movie, The Postman. It's like a post-apocalyptic world, but the guy still is gonna deliver the mail to bring society back. It could be like, right. Kevin Costner is the security guard. Can we talk about them driving straight into a tunnel against Jim's suggestion? Yes.

[02:03:17] Frank with his cabbie knowledge still thinks that's a good idea, but it is one of the better sequences of the movie. It looks crazy. Yeah. Don't you think? Yeah, it's great. The whole sequence is so good. So it's so tense with the rats

[02:03:30] and then deciding to just lift the car instead of using the jack and tire changing is always stressful to me. So this is just like the ultimate trigger event, but you know what's interesting? So the very famous musical theme that comes in the climax of the movie

[02:03:47] when Jim's going buck wild and killing everybody, which is I read the composer for the film basically made a Godspeed you black emperor sound alike because they couldn't get any more music out of that band of principled Canadians. So he created that like incredibly layered menacing,

[02:04:09] like what people consider the theme to 28 Days Later. It only plays once in the movie. I remembered it being played through any zombie action sequence because it's just so distinctive that I associate it with the entire movie. But when they're lifting up the jack

[02:04:24] or they're lifting up the car in the tunnel, the score for that is much more abstract. Yeah, with just like squealing guitars and feedback. It was not what I remembered it as being, which is the famous piece of music. But I also think because that piece of music

[02:04:41] is reused in a lot of other places. It's reused in the opening of 28 Weeks Later when they're chasing him to the boat, which is fucking baller. It's much like John Murphy's sunshine theme that's now just like omnipresent. Right. Yes.

[02:04:55] But I mean, music is so pivotal to every single movie from Danny Boyle we've covered so far. Right? Like it is his biggest ace in the hole or whatever is that he just seems to always know what's going to be like new and resonant and kind of different.

[02:05:13] Right? Like he's gonna find music that works for the movie, but it's also like the kind of music you don't really hear in movies. Like this is gonna shock you. He's so clever. So yeah, so they go to Manchester. Brendan Gleeson dies.

[02:05:27] He is shot to death by the military because Christopher Eccleston, Major Henry West has set up some kind of fortified mansion and he's like broadcasting to survivors. But it's all a ruse because as you have mentioned, David, they really just want to like lure women

[02:05:45] into sexual slavery to like repopulate the world because they've all gone completely fucking crazy. And again, it's been 28 days. Yeah, but it's there, you know, not to speak ill of our armed servicemen obviously or whatever, but there is that kind of like authority streak that's frightening.

[02:06:03] You know, like what if that was completely unencumbered and all of a sudden like the guy with the gun gets to make all the rules, you know, all that stuff. Especially in England where people don't have guns like in the same way.

[02:06:15] He's the real anti Brendan Gleeson though. It's like Brendan Gleeson is like not lost any of his humanity and this guy was like, ships are down, now I get cooking. I got bad vibes that make everyone feel uncomfortable. The slow burn and the slow revelation

[02:06:29] of what they're actually up to is really effective because there's that scene where Jim is taking, he's taking a shower and he looks out the window. Remember there's that cook character. Yes. There's the army cook Jones who is, you see him literally wearing a pink apron,

[02:06:44] like the most gendered thing you can imagine. And then Jim looks out the window and the soldiers are like doing donuts in a Jeep, teasing the Jones who's coded as the woman of the group because he works in the kitchen and serves them food and stuff, right?

[02:07:01] There's all these little hints that like something is awry. That stuff is like really good and creepy. That actor, his name is Leo Bill and Griffin, you may recognize him from Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. He's kind of like a classic, shitty fiance. Shinless wonder.

[02:07:15] Yeah, this sort of like English guy who just kind of looks like he came out of a Charles Dickens illustration. He's like, oh, I know. Right. Of course at the beginning of Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland where he is presented as her prospective husband and she goes,

[02:07:27] this is the worst fate imaginable. I must run away and find something else. And ironically ends up in an even worse fate. Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. Right. Having lunch with Johnny Depp. Should have stuck with Leo Bill. Not so bad anymore. But I like that actor.

[02:07:46] So I feel like obviously David, you referenced what I feel like is sort of the commonly held opinion on Sunshine, which is like, eh, that movie kind of goes insane right at the end. I also feel like that was true for this movie.

[02:07:55] Less so, but I do feel like the general buzz on this movie was like, it is outrageous. It is so good. It's so scary. And the final act kind of lost me. And it's like, I'll tell you why the final act lost you

[02:08:07] because it is so profoundly disturbing in another way. Big ass bummer. Like not in the high octane, like we're running away from a zombie thing. In this kind of like, you're like, oh Jesus. Like, okay, that is plausible. That is unsettling.

[02:08:23] Well, you also, as an audience member, right? There's less distancing. You're not like, you don't walk out of the theater thinking, well, thank God there aren't zombies that don't have to deal with this on a day-to-day basis. Like the Eccleston act, you're just like,

[02:08:39] all right, humanity is pretty fucking awful. Right, yeah. Nothing I can do about that. Right. And there's this specific thing of the one zombie soldier that they've chained up and they're just like, sort of being like, let's see what happens. They're doing observation on him.

[02:08:55] He says, he's telling me he's futureless. Which, you know, when he's vomiting, when the zombie is vomiting, there's something like weirdly visceral about that. So when they do that, what do you call that filming technique? Where they, it's that thing where you have every,

[02:09:10] it's like every other frame, but each frame is held twice as long. You know, there's kind of that strobing effect that he uses for the zombie attacks. Yes, so the strobing. Right. Right, I don't, yeah, I don't know what you would call it. I believe that is,

[02:09:22] it's all, it's frame rate play. It's filming a different frame rate and projecting it at 24. Right, yeah. And I'm just, my brain isn't working right now and I can't remember if that effect is filming more frames or less frames.

[02:09:36] But it makes the zombie stuff really, really come alive. And he uses it really well in the moment that we'll get to in a minute, which was Jim is about to begin his rampage and he starts cranking the perimeter alarm, which freaks everybody out within the manor.

[02:09:52] And that's the first time that you see Jim shot at that frame rate because now he's in zombie mode, right? Right. So he starts, so Boyle starts shooting him the same way and all of us, that's why that whole sequence

[02:10:03] is just like so intense because of the way it's strobing. Yeah, you know, it's good nasty stuff. I think Eccleston is really well deployed because he is such a familiar face and he's obviously someone who's worked with Boyle before,

[02:10:18] but he's so good at playing that kind of knife edge character where you're like, am I, you know, should I trust this guy? And like, he can kind of take it to a point and then you're like, oh no, he's like really frightening.

[02:10:29] Well, and his face looks like a knife. Yeah, he's just, yes, the angular face, he's got that kind of Roman nose, he's got a big beak, which I love. I love him, I love him as an actor. I love what, he's always been like kind of an outspoken,

[02:10:46] interesting guy, like I dig. Yeah, yeah, he's really good in interviews. Is this his last Boyle movie? I guess it is, yeah. Yeah. He doesn't do a lot of movies. No. Like he really, like he does a lot of television. Yeah. I don't know, yeah, I don't know.

[02:11:03] Do you like Eccleston in this? You'll appreciate this, David, the epigraph to this Chris Hedges book, War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, is the final stanza from Wilford Owens' Dolce et Decorum Est, which is one of his legendary World War I poems,

[02:11:19] which is a really powerful poem. Like it's extremely moving and it speaks to Chris Hedges' thesis and also the thesis of this movie, I think, which is like, oh, you think all this fighting and war making is fun? Like this will be your downfall,

[02:11:33] like on a spiritual level. All it does is destroy people. But anyway, I wanted to listen to some people reading Dolce et Decorum Est and one of the first YouTube hits is Eccleston doing a reading of it and it's pretty good. That's cool. Yeah.

[02:11:49] Did you see Benediction this year or last year? No, what's that? I did not. The Terrence Davis film. You guys should both see it. It's really good. It's a biopic. It's more about Siegfried Sassoon. Wilford Owen is also in it, but it's a great Terrence Davis movie

[02:12:03] about the World War I poets. Really? That whole scene, Siegfried Sassoon was at least bisexual or he had gay relationships mostly with them. Wilford Owen was an amazing person, a fascinating person. Yeah. And a really good poet. Do you know what's wild, David?

[02:12:21] I'm looking at Christopher Eccleston's IMDb. Not only you're saying like, oh, this is his last part of the movie, he doesn't do a lot of movies. After 20 days later, he doesn't make another movie for five years. Right, yeah. And he does Doctor Who in between, he does Heroes.

[02:12:36] Doctor Who, which is obviously very involved. Right, yeah. But he does not do a movie between 28 days later and Notorious YA flop, The Seeker, The Dark Is Rising. Remember when The Dark Was Rising? And then it's like, right, he has this run of like intermittently

[02:12:51] like playing Destro in G.I. Joe, playing Malekith in Thor, The Dark World. Yeah, that's the thing, he would pop up in these, no offense, kind of low rent, you know, blockbuster movies. The least interesting villain parts. And then he would get these interviews

[02:13:06] where he was like, I hated making that, it's so awful. And they're like years apart from each other, yeah. But obviously he's so incredible in The Leftovers, more recently, I love his part in that television show. And now he's doing the fourth season of True Detective,

[02:13:26] which I know very little about, but he is in it. The fourth season? Oh, yeah, with the people. Yes. Yes. With, um. Do you remember the? Jodie Foster. Yeah, my friend wrote on that, I'm excited for it. Jodie Foster and what, John Hawks is in it,

[02:13:41] I think they filmed it in like Iceland, I don't know. Yeah, it's set somewhere cold. I'm always down for that. It might even be like Antarctic, it might be set at the North Pole, I think it's something really crazy like that. Cool, great, I love that show.

[02:13:52] Don't quote me on that, but I think that's true. I hope it's about Santa crimes. That would be cool if like Santa's like, I don't know why, and it goes all the way to the top, it goes all the way to Claus. Yep.

[02:14:03] And he's like, stop asking questions. Yeah. I brought you in here to tidy this up. And he's like, I'm gonna bring the whole system down, Mr. Toy Man. Anyway, what happens in this sequence of crime? I mean, it's really just the eventual thing

[02:14:17] is that he lets the chained up zombie go, which anyone can predict that's gonna happen, right? What happens is Wes reveals to Jim that he is gonna let the soldiers rape Selena and Hannah. Right, he's like, get in on this with me.

[02:14:31] You know, do you wanna do it? Like, right, he's sort of offering him, yeah. Jim tries to stop it. Jim and Feral, who is the one soldier who sympathizes with our protagonists. Stuart McQuarrie, who's the actor. Who believes that the rest of the world

[02:14:48] is going on as normal, and this is like bullshit, that England's been quarantined, but the rest of the world is fine, so you guys are jumping the gun in terms of repopulating the earth by raping these women. Meanwhile, Major West is making the thesis of the movie,

[02:15:01] which is, I think it's just another day at the office. All I see is people killing each other, and we've been doing that forever, so there's no difference. So Feral and Jim are taken out into the woods to be shot by Mitch, who's like the head bad guy,

[02:15:15] this really sadistic, thuggish actor, and Jones, who is the chef who was wearing the pink apron, but has now killed because there was a zombie invasion and all the landmines went off, and Jones shot one of the invading zombies,

[02:15:29] so now he feels like he's more of a man. Things go awry, and then Jim escapes after Feral is killed. The soldiers return to the compound, to Brideshead Revisited, and then Jim sounds the alarm, and then we go into ass-kicking mode. Yeah, death mode, yeah, right.

[02:15:49] West's death, where he gets smashed through the car and pulled out the window, is a particularly visceral thing. But Jim shoots off the chains that are restraining the soldier who is already zombified, and this is one of the things that's kind of morally complicated and fucked up,

[02:16:07] and what makes this sequence so exciting is it's not just that Jim himself as a human decides to wreak vengeance on all these people, he enlists the chaotic energy of a fucking zombie to help him just eradicate these people, right?

[02:16:22] He's just picking them off one by one in this sequence, which is all scored by this one piece of music that plays on, there's no cuts in the music. This whole sequence is six minutes, and the music builds. It's a six-minute crescendo until the moment

[02:16:37] that Selina almost kills Jim. It's like pretty incredible use of music to set mood and tension and stuff. Yeah, it's sort of a cool sort of sub-zombie trope. The Michonne character in The Walking Dead has the thing where she has two zombies that she walks around with.

[02:16:54] Yeah, like I do, you know, the more, the whole thing with things like The Walking Dead, the deeper you get where it's like, well, we gotta keep coming up with stuff, the more you sort of see those kinds of tropes getting messed around with, yeah.

[02:17:08] But I do, yeah, it turns my stomach the whole, do you just put this guy down or do you let him run wild and kill everybody? And the sound design in this sequence is also really good because it's an empty, under-furnished house with high ceilings

[02:17:24] and just like seven people screaming and running from room to room with a lot of like room echo and stuff. It's really, really well done. The sound design is really good in this whole sequence. This whole movie. Did you guys, so David, you saw it in the theater.

[02:17:37] Griff, did you see this movie in the theater? Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you did? Okay, okay, okay, yeah, because I remember it being rattling in the theater. Yes, yes, and it was like, look, I still enjoyed re-watching this movie,

[02:17:51] but watching this movie on a small screen at home has a very different effect than watching it up on a big screen in a room with a lot of people. Right. Yeah, yeah, and just because of the muddiness of the images and everything,

[02:18:05] it's a lot more alarming when they're so large. Right, yeah, yeah. You know, I, and just the silence in those moments where the music does drop out becomes so much more alarming. They've been playing it a lot at IFC here in New York City

[02:18:26] as like a midnight movie, and I missed it last weekend it was playing. But yes, no, I saw this in theater. This was, I mean, this came out right at the point where I was starting to get really into zombie movies.

[02:18:39] So this kind of came out at like a perfect point for me in the bell curve, yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. Sunshine is similar where like, I love that movie. I've seen it like 10, 12 times. Yeah. But I love that movie. It's really one of my favorite movies.

[02:18:57] Same, same, same, same. Century, whatever. Yeah. But in a theater, the sound design in that movie is so impressive and special, yeah. And I'd love to see it in a theater again. Maybe we will, who knows? Anyway, so that's basically it. 28 days later again, we cut to black

[02:19:16] and then there's this sort of happy ending in Cumbria in Northern England. The infected are dying off, they're starving, and they are sort of spotted by a fighter jet and they spell out hello, right? It's sort of this surprisingly light ending. It's nice.

[02:19:34] This is shot on 35 millimeter, right? Like this, just the end sequence is on film, yeah. They shot it later I think because someone wasn't available, Alwyn Cookler, who is a wonderful cinematographer who works with Boyle on Sunshine and Steve Jobs and a lot of other cool movies,

[02:19:50] but he was Lin Ramsey's cinematographer. He shot it with him. So let me ask you a question about this ending. And I know that there are alternate endings that are much darker and keep things on a bleak, right? Yeah, I don't like the alternate endings so much.

[02:20:05] Is this ending supposed, because this ending in a way, for two reasons I find incredibly ironic. And it reminds me of the irony in Dawn of the Dead, which is that the big thing that made that movie so legendary in addition to establishing the iconography

[02:20:23] of the shuffling, slow moving zombie is the idea that like, look at these dumb zombies came back to the mall because it's all they know because they're brain dead, just like all you people who like buying shoes. But then there's an ironic moment in that movie

[02:20:37] where the protagonists who were supposed to be so much smarter than the zombies also go crazy in the mall and go shop, have their Ben's fantasy of a shopping spree. Right. Now in this movie, we find that the real enemies to humanity are not these poor zombies

[02:20:52] who are infected with a virus that's outside their control, but these military guys who want to rape women in order to start repopulating the world and have something to live for. They wanna play house in their huge empty manor in the middle of a field

[02:21:06] that's surrounded by landmines and tripwires. Right. And that's obviously absurd and evil and awful. We have two characters, Jim and Hannah, who were both the only children of two parent households. And by the end of the movie, both of those, all their parents are dead.

[02:21:26] We don't know much about Selena's family. But in the final image of this movie, we have recreated the nuclear family with Jim, Selena and Hannah, right? Jim and Hannah, or Jim and Selena now are kind of the parental proxies for the much younger Hannah.

[02:21:42] And we see through the back half of the movie, the final third of the movie, Selena looking out for Hannah and feeding her Valium so that she can disassociate while the soldiers do their thing. Not only that, not only have they recreated the nuclear family

[02:21:56] as a symbol of like the future and hope of humanity, then they also get excited when a military fighter jet flies over. Have you learned nothing about the nature of the military? And that's fine. As far as happy endings go, it's good enough.

[02:22:10] But I wonder if part of us is supposed to be like, now hold on a minute. What happened the last time you put your faith in these military bigwigs, right? What is interesting to me, I had not seen this film since seeing it in theaters.

[02:22:24] And I remembered the ending just being the truck crashing. I remembered it having the most bleak, oblique ending of just the truck crashes and they go through the windshield and the movie's over and it's unresolved. I had completely forgotten this ending. Oh, interesting.

[02:22:43] I don't know if I had seen the alternate endings, which I watched for this. This ending, the theatrical ending or the one we're talking about is the one that feels, it's the one thing in this movie that does feel like what we were complimenting this movie

[02:23:03] for not doing to a degree. It does feel like this is the one part of the movie that is actually in reaction to what's going on in the culture. I think you're right, Reeves, that it feels like this ending sells out

[02:23:14] the rest of the movie a little bit and goes against it a little bit and feels a little more like the kind of earnest late period that Danny Boyle, you were talking about, Sam's. But I also think it was just like, at the point this movie's coming out,

[02:23:26] people need some optimism, right? Yeah, I think it's a little bit that, but I will say, I think this speaks to two things. One, all British people wanna do is fucking move to the countryside and hang up their laundry. They're obsessed with hanging up their laundry.

[02:23:40] It's like, you know, paradise to them is not owning a dryer and just hanging up laundry every single hour of the day. Yeah. Like British people would say to me like, oh, but dryers, those things are no good. And I was like, what are you talking?

[02:23:51] Put the clothes in them, the clothes get dry. It's great. Modern miracle, maybe the best invention of all time. They're like, no, no, no, what you need to do is put them out in real damp weather, you know, cause like out here, you know, it's constantly wet. Yeah.

[02:24:04] I wanna put them outside. Rose pens, what the hell are you talking about? The other thing is the thing you referenced, David, which is that uniquely British thing of like, you know, we're on this island. We're kind of not part of anything

[02:24:19] like which sort of can sometimes fuel that sort of Euroskepticism that sort of reached fever pitch a few years ago. But also like, it's part of our whole, like, you know, imperial past. But like just that idea of like,

[02:24:31] what if Britain was this like escape from New York style, like quarantine zone where it's like, yeah, some bad shit went down over there. Luckily we could lock it down cause you know, it's an island. Right. And like, it sort of speaks to that,

[02:24:45] the like jets are flying over being like, so how are things doing down there? Which I do kind of love. Right, yeah. Which obviously the sequel gets into. And I think that's smart. Like, you know, that is the direction to take it in.

[02:25:00] Like what if England was just a giant quarantine zone? The sequel is the one that ends with the shot of the zombies running through the tunnel, right? Eiffel Tower. Yeah. Oh, I thought it was the Eiffel Tower. Well, they come out of the-

[02:25:10] They do run through the channel. Oh, oh, oh. Come out and you see the Eiffel Tower. Yeah, that's a great ending. Yes. I mean, they're so predictable. Right. They go right to the Eiffel Tower. I know, right? These fucking tourists.

[02:25:22] God, you know, they don't even want to go to the whatever, water balloon. I would, anyway- Wait, where? I want to hear David Sims list third tier tourist attractions in Paris that zombies are too- The Rodin Museum. Okay, here we go. Let's keep going. Jim Morrison's grave.

[02:25:38] They don't go straight to Jim Morrison's grave, the Lizard King? Yeah. I have done that multiple times. I have gone to, you know, Père Lachaise. Are you a fan of the doors? David, David. No, I'm not. I think that first record, you know, has its place.

[02:25:58] Like, you know, the debut album with- Yeah, the dumpster. Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Kabam! I like, you know, like break on through to the other side, okay? You know, especially if it's two and a half minutes long and not, you know, 40 minutes long. Right. Like, but no,

[02:26:16] I'm not really a doors guy. Never really, I feel like you had to be there with Jim Morrison, right? A little bit. And maybe not even then. Yeah. Maybe not even then. And I also think that like, that is maybe like the most annoying biopic ever made.

[02:26:33] Like, right? Like, is that, that's like the trope-iest, silliest- Oh, when he's wearing leather pants and a shirt and posed as a crucified Christ figure. For like an hour. Like, you're just like, shut up! Jesus Christ! I thought you were 27 when you died.

[02:26:48] How long is this going on for? Oh, are you talking about the movie about the doors? I'm talking about the movie. I'm talking about the- I thought you were talking about that famous photo of him. Sorry. Well, the photos, the photos are all right.

[02:26:58] He was a handsome man. It takes two hours off of the movie. Yeah. Anyway, let's play the box office game. Unless there's anything else you guys want to say cause we should wrap up. The movie was well received, I would say, right? You know, got pretty good reviews.

[02:27:15] Critics pick in the New York Times. That's not nothing. No, and it was a crossover hit, especially for such a low budget. It was a deeply, deeply profitable movie that got boiled back onto people's... Got them back in the conversation.

[02:27:31] It was made, yeah, it was made for about 5 million pounds and like gross, like 45 domestic and like another 40 worldwide, you know, internationally. Which like, it doesn't seem crazy or anything, but it was just like, it was a movie in America that never opened beyond like 1200 theaters.

[02:27:48] Like, you know, it never went super wide. No, no, it was like very successful kind of programming in the middle of the summer, yeah. Right. And in fact, Griffin, June 27th, 2003, it's opening number four. Okay. But what's opening number one? It's new this week.

[02:28:04] It's a silly high octane sequel based on a television show. Charlie's Angels Full Throttle? Yes. The kind of movie that is like kind of diametric. We don't make them anymore. Yeah, we don't make them that way anymore. Like one of the glossiest movies ever. Reserved, kind of austere.

[02:28:27] Every shot in that movie feels like, you know, McG was just kind of like, well, they're walking down the hallway, boring. How do we make that crazy? You know, like, you know, even the most transitional establishment shot, like it just all has to be completely wild.

[02:28:43] Yeah, I think the original working title of that film was Charlie's Angels Vivo Official because it just feels like a series of music videos stacked in order. There you go. But yes, yes, no, it's one of the most movies ever made. David, I'm assuming you have not seen

[02:29:01] Charlie's Angels Full Throttle. It is the only movie I've seen more times than 28 days later. I've seen it seven times. And I've seen all the alternate endings and I think if you read it in the context of Chris Hedges' masterpiece War is a Force

[02:29:16] that gives us meaning, you're gonna find a lot of interesting subtext in that movie. And Samantha Power is in it, of course. It was, you know, our current, yeah, okay. So Charlie's Angels Full Throttle opening to an underwhelming $37 million. That movie was a bit of a disappointment.

[02:29:31] Yes, yes, especially with a hugely inflated budget. Right, and the first movie had done surprisingly well. Now the reason this box office game is very interesting, Griffin, is that number two is a film that was number one last week, but has plummeted 70% since its opening weekend.

[02:29:50] I believe this is one of my favorite movies ever covered on the podcast. It's an infamous second weekend drop. I believe this is Ang Lee's Hulk. Yes, the worst drop in the history of like blockbusters basically. At that point in time. Audiences were like, no, thank you.

[02:30:04] We didn't enjoy this and we told everyone not to see it. Is that good? I've heard that's really good. Yes, it is. It's fantastic. I heard it's like if Terrence Malick made a superhero movie. Yep, you are going to. Sort of, and there are,

[02:30:18] and it is also one of those movies that is like so infused with post 9-11 Iraq war vibes, even though it was definitely made before the Iraq war. Right, yeah. It was made before 9, it wasn't, you know, and like there's this sequence where the Hulk

[02:30:32] is like jumping in the desert and he's being like hit with cluster bombs and I just remember at the time being like, whoa, this is like so, you know, anyway. It's all about suppressed trauma. Yeah, I'm gonna put that on my list. You're gonna love it.

[02:30:48] Number three at the box office is an animated film, Griffin. An animated film in 2003. The most successful animated film of all time at this point. Wow, so it's still going really strong, it's Finding Nemo. Finding Nemo. The biggest movie of that year. Which is very delightful.

[02:31:10] It's got fish and so on. That movie made me cry. I saw that in the same movie theater where I saw 28 Days Later because there's a sea turtle character, like a stoner sea turtle, and he reminded me so vividly of one of my best friends from high school,

[02:31:25] I started tearing up. Sea turtles love to be 100 years old. That's what Sandy Plankton says. When Crush says how old he is at the end of Finding Nemo, I usually tear up. I'm tearing up thinking about it right now, actually. Griffin, the opening of Moana

[02:31:44] when she's a little baby and she plays in the water and helps the turtle get to the ocean. I've been watching that a lot because my daughter likes it. Just that isolated clip. That sequence is a crack to children. It's lovely. It's a lovely sequence

[02:32:00] and it has a little baby in it being cute. But the turtle in it, I'm like, they just fucking stole this from Finding Nemo. It looks exactly the same. It's just the same damn turtle. They just dropped him in. What's Crush? They want, look, Crush was,

[02:32:11] he wasn't gonna hit his SAG health insurance that year. Right, yeah. And he phoned up Disney and he asked them to throw him a bone. Number four is 28 Days Later. Number five, it's a film we've covered on this podcast. It's a sequel. It's a big hit.

[02:32:25] It's not well-liked and there will be a new edition in this series in theaters soon. It just dropped its trailer. Too Fast to be Furious? Too Fast to Furious. Wow. What did you think of the Fast X trailer, Griffin? Good. I've only seen it two times yet.

[02:32:44] So I'm barely processed, but yeah, I did like it. I wasn't as amped. The F9 trailer, we recorded that reaction live. You were very excited about that. I was edge of my seat. I still remain a little skeptical of this one.

[02:32:57] Yeah, this one lacks the hook of that trailer a little bit. This one's just kind of like, family is tested and you're like, yeah, sure. There's some interesting pieces on the board, but I'm not hooting and hollering yet. Some other movies that year in that beautiful summer of 2003,

[02:33:15] Bruce Almighty, a huge hit that year. The Italian Job, Mark Wahlberg as Michael Caine. Rugrats Go Wild? Is that the first Rugrats? That's the Wild Thornberrys crossover. Oh God, right. Jesus, they allowed that in theaters. Okay. Hollywood Homicide, the Josh Hartnett, Harrison Ford team up. Notorious.

[02:33:39] That was a movie? It was called Hollywood Homicide? Oh, Hollywood Homicide. It's like, what if there was a detective in LA who was also a real estate agent? That's literally the premise of that movie. That's a movie? Director of Bull Durham.

[02:33:52] Yes, like a career killer for everyone involved. Is it a comedy? It's a comedy. Oh, okay. A crime comedy, like an action comedy. But it's one of those classic, Harrison Ford just looks like, get me out of here. I don't know why I'm doing this.

[02:34:06] And Josh Hartnett is completely at sea. Just like, why am I in a movie with Harrison Ford? Reece, we've already done this on Mike. So I'll just send you the link and recommend that you do it on your own time for your own enjoyment.

[02:34:19] But I highly recommend you looking at the cast list of Hollywood Homicide. Both the list of actors and the character names of who they play. Yeah, check it out sometime. And then number 10, Alex and Emma. Rob Reiner's famed flop. Yeah.

[02:34:34] Where Luke Wilson has to write a novel or something. Yeah, a lot of flops in this top five. A lot of top 10 belly flops from major artists. And three blank check movies in the top 10. But movies I remember seeing in theaters very profoundly. Charlie's Angels, Hulk, Finding Nemo,

[02:34:53] Whale Rider is in the top 15. And that's a movie I remember like seeing in theaters and sobbing like when she rides the whale at the end or whatever she does. She does in fact ride that whale, yeah. Anyway, that's it. David, have we covered everything about 28 Days Later

[02:35:12] that you wanted to mention? Not even close, but it was a really fun episode and I was really glad to have the opportunity to rewatch this movie. Well, maybe we'll just do another one 28 months later or something. It's a really, really good zombie movie

[02:35:29] and it's a really good genre movie. And it's not as affecting to me now as it was 20 years ago, but it was, in a weird way, it was a very comforting movie for me back when it came out because of all the stuff we talked about hours ago.

[02:35:44] Yeah, well you felt, yeah, hours ago. Okay, so it's time to be done. And that's- Oh, I didn't mean that as a critique. I was just like- Well, it was hours ago though. You're not wrong. Time has passed, yeah. Yes, but yeah, no, I mean,

[02:35:56] it's just that thing where you were like, someone understands. That's sort of how you were feeling. Yeah, right. Yeah, right, like, okay, okay. People do get what I'm feeling. But David, what do you wanna, obviously, Election Profit Makers. That's the podcast I do with my friend

[02:36:13] about betting on elections and you can watch Dicktown on Hulu. The great Dicktown. Dicktown's so good. Starring Griffin Newman. Guest starring, but it's a Rees-Hodgman vehicle. And as far as the other show, Going Deep with David Rees, I think you can buy it on YouTube.

[02:36:33] I'm always confused about where it is. I'm looking this up right now, hold on. Going Deep with David Rees. It's always been moving around, yeah. Yeah, we like to keep it moving. It's a fast zombie of a TV show. Keep it moving, keep it moving.

[02:36:44] Don't let it, not one place, yeah. Don't let it throw up blood all over you. I'm seeing both seasons for sale on iTunes and I would say it's money well spent. Oh, all right. Absolutely. That's good to know. Yeah, and Election Profit Makers has a Patreon.

[02:36:57] You guys do all kinds of cool stuff on that page. I love your Patreon. Oh, thank you, yeah. You're welcome. Thank you for coming back. It's always such a special time. Yeah, it was really nice to see you guys again. Ben, I hope you feel better soon.

[02:37:09] I'll be thinking of you. Thank you so much. It's nice to see you, David. I love, you know, hit me up next time you're in NY. I will, and if any of you guys are ever in LA, I hope you'll let me know.

[02:37:21] Yeah, oh, also, wait, wait a second. David, hit me up next time you're in NY. I don't want you to feel like this is a, only Sims you can hit up. Feel free to hit me up the next time. I can hit you up too?

[02:37:31] Yeah, feel free and I'll hit you up the next time I'm in LA. All right. And maybe next time you're in New York, hit up Ben. If you're in LA or in New York. If you wanna bump. Give me a bump. All right, guys, let's be done.

[02:37:43] Ben will bump you. Yeah, we can bump. He is in LA. Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review and subscribe. Thank you to Marie Barty for our social media and helping to produce this show. Thank you to Joe Bone and Pat Reynolds for our artwork.

[02:37:57] Lane Montgomery and the Great American Novel for our theme song. AJ McKee and Alex Barron for our editing. JJ Birch for our research. You can go to BlankCheckPod.com for some links to some real nerdy shit, including merch and a Shopify page and Blank Check special features,

[02:38:14] our Patreon show where we do franchise commentaries, but we also do fun extra bonus stuff, such as 28 Weeks Later, which we've talked about in this episode. We can talk about more at length there. As a reminder, every 10 days, we do a new episode on Patreon,

[02:38:30] but we also unlock an episode from three years ago. So if you wanna go to Patreon.com slash Blank Check and just sample the 2020 episodes for free, I'm sure they're very normal and no way reflect society collapsing 28 days later. There's that alien resurrection one

[02:38:47] when Trump had just gotten COVID. That one's always a good listen. Is that the one where Ben falls asleep? Yes, and Ben falls asleep. Yeah, that's a wild ride, that one. It's a real wild ride. That's a real time capsule. We're just vibrating with energy

[02:38:59] because we're just like, we can't talk about it because what if he dies in between recording this and releasing it? Right, right. The most exciting day in Twitter history. What a day. Trump got COVID. We had a Zoom meeting to be like,

[02:39:13] do we talk about this at all? Right, what do we do? Yeah. Just incredible. But you can listen to that, that'll be unlocked soon. Tune in next week for millions? Yeah, next week is millions. Oh no, no, you know what? Next week is our Blankies episode.

[02:39:29] Oh, well good thing you checked. Yes, good thing I checked. Next week is the eighth annual Blankie Award, something like that. And then the week after that, we're back on the Boil Train with millions. Yep, charming Euro kids comedy millions. And thank you again for coming David.

[02:39:54] And it's been great. Yeah, it's been wonderful. And as always, let's hope that Ben has only gotten infected with COVID and not rage.