Holy Smoke! with Kyle Buchanan

[00:00:00] Blank Check with Griffin and David Okay Tampax Tool, I'm gonna give it to you right up your arse. All this man-hating shit for a start? Oh, she criticized me, I called her a man-hater. I know what you want from me. You just want a youthful pussy transfusion,

[00:00:33] preferably one you can take home to show the menfolk. What a beautiful post you got to piss on. Jeans pressed, cowboy boots. Is that a uniform for individuals? Is it? I want a podcast. God, this is really challenging your accent game, Griffin, this miniseries.

[00:00:53] It is. I also feel like, it's, I mean, she spends some of the movie in a zone between British and Australian. Is that fair to say? I would say that Kate Winslet is always in a zone

[00:01:08] when she's doing an accent. Would you agree? Right. I love her. She's always kind of walking a line. I'm not great at accents, period. Australian accent may be the one I struggle

[00:01:18] with the most. This is hard because I'm like, but am I doing an impression of Kate Winslet's Australian accent or am I just doing my Australian? Don't a lot of Australians kind of spend their lives in a zone between British and Australian? Am I immediately alienating the

[00:01:33] Australian accent? Kyle, I'm with you. Say it. And like, this is the thing, I don't want to alienate our Aussie listeners. And I know that's a slightly, that's a sort of whatever, unfair opinion, maybe of an English, but like, certainly it's like we're all walking lines with our

[00:01:50] English language accents. I suppose. Right. Australian, Canadian, British. I don't know. It's just funny that Winslet has done so many accents over the years and never been a good accent person. Right? Wait, I disagree. I think she's great at it. I mean, I don't know. I can't

[00:02:07] speak to the versatility. No, look, this is, I think this is the point David's making. She is an actor who I almost always loved, even if I objectively think her accent work is iffy.

[00:02:19] Let me throw some accents out. I'm going to throw some out. Okay? So there's the life of David Gale. That was up to me a famous one. Still never seen it. Right. I know no one remembers the life of

[00:02:30] David Gale, but she's doing an American accent in that movie that I remember being very crisp. Often her American accent is fine. Like, you know, eternal sunshine or something. Look, I think eternal sunshine is a masterpiece. I think that's probably her best performance.

[00:02:44] I would have given her the Oscar that year. I do think her American accent in that movie is overly crisp. She does have British accent doing American. Everything is just too precise kind of thing. It doesn't even necessarily fit for the character, but this is my exact point.

[00:02:59] She is one of those actors where she fucking overcomes it. Steve Jobs, another example of like that accent all over the place. That's a great performance. But I don't need an accent to be

[00:03:09] real. I agree. I agree. We all agree. This is what's fascinating about her is there are people whose accents are bad in a way that is distracting and takes away from it. And she is always able to

[00:03:21] overcome perhaps the lack of technical accuracy in her. It's an old Hollywood thing. She's doing a voice and you're like, that's fine. The reader, she did an accent in the reader. I think the accent's good in the reader, but that's a crappy performance at a crappy movie.

[00:03:34] She also did Australian in The Dressmaker, which is a very wild movie. She did it opposite of Hemsworth to a Hemsworth space. And it's kind of a Campion adjacent. I mean, that movie shares a lot of Campion collaborators. Yeah. I mean, it's also a Morehouse directed.

[00:03:49] Right. I mean, yeah. Is that Winslet's rule? She's like, if I'm going Australian, the movie's going to be completely bananas because that movie is bananas. I feel like there's another one. I'm forgetting now. Is there another Winslet accent I'm not

[00:04:03] thinking of? What's her Titanic accent? That's sort of that mid-Atlantic kind of accent. Yeah. Her Titanic accent is beyond reproach. Come on now. I love it. But she's playing in that she's playing kind of like, you know, a hoity toity rich. So it's sort of like that.

[00:04:21] Yeah. But we all agree she is one of these actors who kind of defies logic where you never, ever can ding her for the accent. You can be like, yeah, of course, I mean, the accent isn't great,

[00:04:31] but it like never subtracts from the performance at all. And then there are things like Mare of Easttown where people are like, she kind of nailed a tricky accent. She really did a good job with that accent. That's the one I was thinking of.

[00:04:42] No one fucking gets that one right. And she got it right. You know, I would even venture to say that if there's something that's slightly exaggerated or unexpected about where she lands with the accent, it's in pursuit of character.

[00:04:54] Even that crispness to her American accent in Eternal Sunshine, there is a little bit of like, you know, she can be Kurt. So why not? Yeah, yeah. But maybe I'm reverse engineering. No, I think it gets...

[00:05:08] It's weird. As you said, David, movie star shit where you're just like, sometimes that it is bizarre and illogical which things matter more or less than other things in a performance, which things overpower, you know? But enough about House of Gucci.

[00:05:24] I mean, that movie is like an incredible... You could sort... If I ever had to teach acting at any sort of school, I would just screen House of Gucci every single week and just dissect the

[00:05:33] different types of screen performances and approaches to. Look, let's dive into it because I think... Wonder Wheel. She's got a terrible accent in there. But no one wants to remember Wonder Wheel. No one escaped alive. And Romance and Cigarette, she's doing a similar sort of thing.

[00:05:49] Right, right. Maybe Full Brooklyn, she should never go. I guess that's her one, which is often true for many actors. I'm realizing this is only the second... No, third Winslet. I'm sorry. Of course, third Winslet. We've done Titanic and Sense and Sensibility and Holy Smokes. We've done

[00:06:05] her first two Oscar nominations and then maybe her first big whiff in certain ways. This is her first post-Titanic performance. Hideous Kinky, she filmed pre-Titanic. Okay. So this is her first, like, I'm done with Titanic, this is the project I'm picking. It's pretty fun to consider.

[00:06:23] This and Hideous Kinky back to back are fascinating and I feel like we're gonna spend a lot of time talking about Winslet career shit in this episode, more than we did in Titanic or Sense and Sensibility. But this is a podcast about

[00:06:33] filmographies. Directors but also actors, sure. We can talk about Kate Winslet's filmography here. But it's primarily about directors who experience massive success early on in their career and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion products they want. Sometimes

[00:06:49] those checks clear and sometimes they bounce. Baby. I'm Griffin, by the way. I'm David. You're getting fast. I couldn't even throw you off. I saw you. You saw it coming. You were trying to do it different, right?

[00:07:01] Yeah. It's a miniseries on the films of Jane Campion. We've been going camping. It's called the Podcastiano. That's right. Another accent being tested for me on this miniseries. And today we're talking about Holy Smoke. And here's my two word review of this movie. Holy shit.

[00:07:21] Like this fucking thing. Yes. And introduce our guest. Our guest today, of course, from the New York Times and author of the book that has just come out or is about to come out. It's about to come out when this drops.

[00:07:37] In mere days, blood, sweat and chrome, the wild and true story of Mad Max Fury Road. Kyle Buchanan, long overdue. Thank you for coming on the podcast. I'm so excited to finally be here. Thanks for being here, Kyle. I miss you. We were just talking festivals. I know.

[00:07:53] You know, we're always crossing paths at the fests. Yeah. It's like I go to summer or winter camp in the case of Sundance every year. And David is my festival buddy that I see.

[00:08:05] Yeah, it is nice. It's nice to wait in line and then go to the uncut gems party. Then it's too loud. And I complain. Tell us we stop being such a stick in the mud or whatever. That's usually the dynamic.

[00:08:21] Or eating Eccles Pizza at Sundance while we're waiting in line for the next big movie. Yeah, I don't know. I love all that. I love the... Me too. It's fun. It's like summer camp, like you said. It's movie camp. Yeah. You guys are FFFs? Film Festival Friends.

[00:08:36] I was gonna say Fest Friends forever. Oh, that's cute. Yes, we are. Kyle, Mad Max, of course, is a movie we've covered on this podcast. And then we've talked about was sort of like intrinsically tied to the genesis of this podcast and figuring out what this podcast was.

[00:08:52] And I feel like I always cite it's like that's the best example of an entirely successful blank check movie in the last 20 years. Right? Yeah. Every metric. I mean, yeah, very much so. And one of the most like unlikely incredible blank check movies, you know, one where

[00:09:13] it wasn't just cashing a check. It was being like completely overdrawn just to make it. Yeah, right. It's a really crazy story. Well, no, but this is the point. I feel like a lot of the making of the movie has been

[00:09:26] somewhat mysterious for a while. Like, I'm very grateful that you've written this book now. That's so thorough, because I feel like there was a weird cloud of mystery around it. And there's been a lot of like George Miller explaining meaning of things and sort of his creative intent.

[00:09:45] But like, there's always been such confusion about like, how the fuck did this get made? And then little things would come out like there wasn't one injury. And you're like, how did this set operate on a day to day basis? Yeah, yeah.

[00:09:55] And the way it operated was really crazy. And yeah, that cloud of mystery. I mean, this is a story that stretched on for like two decades. A lot of the people that I got in touch with were like,

[00:10:05] how did you even know that I was involved with this? Because that had never come out before. It also was a movie that for 15 years felt like, well, obviously that will never be made.

[00:10:14] And then once it was being made, you're like, well, obviously, this is going to be a disaster. That was the thing. There's no way this thing feels fucking cursed. And it's like so many movies we've covered where it's like the person refused to give

[00:10:27] up the idea that everyone is telling them the universe is telling them this is not going to work. And the fact that it's just such a complete triumph in every way, and it's a movie that has only continued to I feel like, gain legacy and esteem.

[00:10:41] It's just going to like every single year increase in stature. Yeah, 5000%. And it's exactly what you said, Griff. Like, I feel like I walked away from the from writing that book. And hopefully the reader does too.

[00:10:57] Really thinking a lot about the sort of like, steely idiosyncratic belief in yourself, you've got to have to be any sort of director, especially George Miller making Mad Max and, you know, not giving up over 20 years and countless

[00:11:13] active God obstacles that were thrown in his path, but like really anybody, you know, whether it's him or Jane Campion or any of those other sort of like, you know, wacky, unique directors from that side of the world, like they're not making conventional films

[00:11:29] and to get conventional people to sign on to those films can be a real challenge. Yeah, I mean, the movie we're talking about today, Holy Smoke is a wildly unconventional film

[00:11:41] set in Australia by someone who still has a bit of a blank check, more than a bit of a blank check. But Portrait of a Lady is in that weird zone of like, the you know, someone has their big Oscar breakthrough and then the next movie everyone

[00:11:55] goes like, well, this thing's just going to have fucking nominations dripping off of it. And then it like underwhelms a little bit. Right. So you're sort of in that state where people are like, are they a one off?

[00:12:05] Are they never going to have a movie that connects that hard again? Or was that movie just sort of like, you know, not a filler rebound or whatever. But you know what I'm saying? And then this is just such a wild pivot away from

[00:12:19] Piano and Portrait of a Lady, which at that point are like the two movies that are maybe solidifying an American audience minds who Jane Campion is and what type of film she makes.

[00:12:29] I mean, for yeah, for a lot of people who, you know, clocked into Campion with the piano, that might as well have been her first movie. Right. So to get these two period dramas, and then Holy Smoke is wild. I would be so curious to hear from

[00:12:42] your listeners who started chronologically with the podcast, who know, okay, if you're capable of doing Sweetie, then there is a through line from that to Holy Smoke. I mean, this is what I love about the way we structured this podcast,

[00:12:58] the gifts it ends up paying out is just like, most people I think are watching Sweetie having seen the piano going how the fuck did the person who made the piano make this? But if you've watched that first, at least chronologically in this sort of rewatch run,

[00:13:13] and then you watch Piano and Portrait, and then you get to this, you're like, well, this makes more sense. Now, it is, as you said, all the things you just said about Mad Max, like a wildly idiosyncratic movie made by someone with supreme confidence in their vision,

[00:13:28] despite probably 1000 external signs and warnings that like, maybe you shouldn't do this this way. Yeah, and it completely baffled so many people when they got it, because you just wouldn't expect

[00:13:40] it from the person who had made Piano and Portrait of a Lady. I mean, there's so many things about this movie that I think baffled people. One is just the whole idea of like wackiness being

[00:13:51] harnessed to something thoughtful is not a combo that you usually get from Hollywood. And I also just think, you know, people were coming to their conclusions about who Jane Campion was,

[00:14:04] and she threw them a curveball. But she is, like, if you meet her in person, she is kind of a lighter, funnier person than you might expect if you just know her from the piano and all that.

[00:14:15] Fucking goofy, all these special features I've been watching commentators I've been listening to, she's one of these people. And I find very often, the most serious minded sort of artistic, thoughtful, psychologically grounded filmmakers are a lot funnier than you'd think they'd be.

[00:14:33] And the people who are deathly serious and humorless are usually the people who make significantly less interesting movies. The first time I ever saw Jane Campion in the flesh was 2014 at the Cannes Film Festival.

[00:14:45] She was the president of the jury that year. And it was at an after party for the movie Foxcatcher. And she was dancing her ass off with Channing Tatum to the song I Follow Rivers. Like,

[00:14:58] that was my first actual in real life impression of her. And that was a good one, because it's like, okay, Jane Campion is never exactly what you would expect. And I remember even, even knowing

[00:15:08] that at the Venice Film Festival this year, not to sound very Fest Friends Forever about all this, but but I went to a party for Power of the Dog. And Kirsten Dunst was not there. So I was talking

[00:15:20] to Jane, I was like, Are you expecting her? Do you think she's coming anytime soon? And Jane was like, Yeah, she's just putting on her dress. I just saw her in it and she looks amazeballs.

[00:15:32] And just Jane Campion using the word amazeballs, you know, again, it's just something that you wouldn't expect. Because so many tours of this stripe, either they take themselves seriously, or we just expect them to and she doesn't there, there is that kind of lightness and whimsy in her

[00:15:51] own sort of like personal bearing. And you don't always get to see it in her movies. But when you do, it can be fun and unexpected. Like James Gray is makes incredibly tortured movies. And then you

[00:16:02] watch or listen to interview with him. He's like a borscht belt comedian. You know, they're all these people like that. Yeah, I'm, I'm reflecting on her can now I forgot because that that was sort

[00:16:12] of a low key can in a way in that it Winter Sleep one, which is like a trying film, in my opinion, not not a bad movie. But it's, you know, a three hour 15 minute Turkish drama where not like a ton

[00:16:24] happens. And it was up against some pretty like sexy movies. And it was sort of right, it was sort of a mild surprise that it won. Right? You're saying this is the Bright Star year? No, that was the year she was the president. Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry.

[00:16:40] Okay, you know, like it was up against Clouds and Sills Maria and Mommy and Goodbye to Language and Foxcatcher obviously. And what's the other two days one night, I guess? Oh, and Mr. Turner. Yeah,

[00:16:54] I guess a lot of prior winners. Maybe that was one. I don't know. I don't know. It was Didn't they give like the special jury prize split to Mommy and Goodbye to Language

[00:17:05] and Xavier Dolan was like, fuck this shit. How dare you lump me in with Goodbar? He's fucking old. I mean, he's older than Xavier Dolan. I'll say that. He is in fact a little bit older than Xavier Dolan.

[00:17:18] Kyle, you were at that can you were like, I just I just remember Winter Sleep being sort of a everyone being like, okay, you know, That happens sometimes, you know, I mean, sometimes you have jury precedents where it's a

[00:17:30] strange consensus pick, like you wouldn't have expected George Miller to pick Audie Ard's D-Pan as the winner. But sometimes it just comes down to, you know, as the Oscars sometimes do something that feels more consensus rather than daring.

[00:17:47] You know, if you get the right jury, then the consensus is something daring. And then sometimes you just never know. You hear all sorts of stories afterward, though. I love hearing the stories whenever they leak out, which is sort of once in a while. But I just love

[00:18:03] the idea of like, you know, the movie that is so different from what the director would make. You know, that's always fun. Like the Spielberg Blue is the Warmest Color thing, which we've

[00:18:13] already brought up. Or, you know, well, Cate Blanchett was a weird one. She gave it to shoplifters, though. That was so cool. I don't know. But like anyway, the narrative, I think it's a consensus pick. Yeah, exactly. It's a consensus pick, not a, you know,

[00:18:31] just the jury president, obviously. And Campion couldn't give it to herself that year for having Dirty Dance with Channing Tatum, although I would have, you know, that's modesty, that's rules. But I still think they should have let it qualify somehow. Doesn't it feel like she could do

[00:18:47] incredible things with Channing Tatum as a leading man? Yes. I mean, now that she's in this mode with Benedict Cumberbatch. Yeah. Channing is one of the few leading men who is really good at

[00:18:57] interrogating his own sort of sense of masculinity. Look, I know everyone's going to recoil from me saying this, but Channing Tatum as Phil Burbank in Power of the Dog, I'd watch and I think it actually would be good. Channing Tatum and Jesse Plemons as brothers? I'd buy that.

[00:19:12] I'll say this. I also think I think Channing could have pulled off the Jesse Plemons role. Oh, yeah. 5000%. Yeah. Yeah. Kyle, we usually say 100% on this show. 5000% is stepping us up. Me and my sense for exaggeration. I'll start dialing it down.

[00:19:31] No, no, no, no, no. Keep it up. We'll go to 4000 next time. But David, to what you're saying, I think Ceylon at that point in time was like a filmmaker who had

[00:19:41] his champions and there's probably a little bit of like a con jury wanting to put a stamp on him and going like, okay, he's officially important. But also that does feel like to a smaller degree,

[00:19:52] the kind of film you can see Campion watching and being like, I could never make anything like this because his movies are like, so controlled, so bleak, so sparse, like she cannot make a movie that devoid of weirdness.

[00:20:07] And of details, you know, I mean, watching, rewatching Holy Smoke, just like little throwaway details, like the parents having a waterbed or a cockatoo perched on an ironing board, you know, like, where do they come from? I love it.

[00:20:23] Oh, yeah. There's like a sheep that they put like snacks on when they're having a party. I noticed at one point, which fucking rules. The first like 30 or 45 minutes of this movie are like full on sweetie. And then it essentially transitions into being more of a drama,

[00:20:39] but a drama that still has these weirdo gonzo elements that are just played pretty straight. Yeah, like a gonzo romantic drama, I guess. But also everything you learn about the making of

[00:20:52] this movie, it does feel, I mean, she's well known for a very sort of loose style on set where she's like, well, let's try this. Let's try it. Like, it's not like rigor and like this feels like one

[00:21:04] of her loosest movies in that regard. A lot of sort of rolling with the punches and going where the actors want to go is sort of what I've found in the research like, which makes sense because

[00:21:15] it's a character psycho, you know, like, it's the two of them locked in a room for a lot of action. Like it makes sense that and they're very, very different performers. They're very different generations, all that.

[00:21:26] I think also if you give him the chance, Harvey Keitel will not resist turning any and every scene into some sort of acting class exercise, which a lot of this movie feels like. Like it's like the acting coaches in the back of the room

[00:21:39] going like go further see what you can find. He's like, absolutely. I can't wait to go for it. Right? Like Harvey Keitel will always go as wild as big as you want him to.

[00:21:48] He's putting a spelunking helmet on with a light and he's just going deeper and deeper. I'm gonna say something controversial. Maybe we should table it to later. But because I don't

[00:21:57] want to front load because I really do like this movie a lot. But I kind of think that Harvey Keitel is very unsteady in it. I agree. Like acting exercise, I feel like he is not dialed into that character until she puts a dress on him,

[00:22:13] then it starts to work. Then also the cultural image that he comes in with that baggage starts to pay off. But in the early going when he's, you know, I mean, when they say, Oh, you could persuade anybody to do anything. I'm not even persuaded that

[00:22:28] that is the problem. That he is that person at that point. When he comes in and we're being told like this is the A plus cult deprogrammer. He's a cult exit-er. Exit-er. Yes, he's an exit strategist or whatever.

[00:22:42] But like, there's nothing about his vibe or his sort of strategy in the first half of this movie where I'm like, yeah, this guy definitely knows what he's doing and does it all the time. Which is weird.

[00:22:55] His value in this movie is more as like a pop cultural object named Harvey Keitel, you know, like the way that it's subverting what she does with him in the piano. And also building upon it, she sees a real sensitivity to him that I think interests her.

[00:23:12] But it's almost too sensitive in the early going. Like I kind of wanted a little bit more like bravado, machismo and confidence. And I didn't feel like I was totally getting that from

[00:23:23] him. And also Winslet is never less than a total hurricane force in this movie, no matter how she's what she's directing that energy toward. And it's just like no contest whatsoever when you get the two of them together. When it's like that she will eventually not even eventually

[00:23:41] overpower him, but even within a scene sometimes. See, I think I like the Keitel performance more than you guys did in the sense that... Oh, I like the performance in a lot of ways.

[00:23:50] I'm not completely dissing the performance. No, no, no. I just think he worked for me in the initial introduction as like a superficial representation of like Mr. Slick, right? This

[00:24:01] sort of like riff on The Wolf. And then I think like the middle hour plus, I think he totally loses his grasp on the character until the end that you're talking about. It's just weird when he

[00:24:09] comes in and he's like, this is it, baby. Give me the money. Give me the big bucks. I am here to deprogram. Then he's like, I don't know, should we like watch a movie about other cults?

[00:24:18] It's a bummer. I'm going to take your sorry, I'm going to put it over there. See what you think of that. The confidence is not oozing off of him in the way that I maybe wanted to. He is Harvey Keitel.

[00:24:29] He is wearing sunglasses. He's got that going for him for sure. The look is great. The look is great. Yeah. The all black, the little fucking Van Dyke. I guess I had this breakthrough watching this.

[00:24:44] What's the thing about Harvey Keitel as a performer I've never been able to put my finger on that makes his performances so odd, whether they work or they don't. And I think a part of

[00:24:53] it is he might completely lack any capacity for voice modulation. Like aside from the fact that obviously he's got such a fucking strong accent, you know, and such a strong Brooklyn vibe, right?

[00:25:07] All that shit. I feel like Harvey Keitel delivers every single line in every single movie at the exact same volume. And sometimes when you're asking him to be like really intense and high status, you're like, can you give it a little more? And sometimes when you're like, Harvey,

[00:25:22] I need you to go gentle. It sounds like he's yelling, you know? Like it just feels like he delivers every line at sort of this exact volume. I'm Harvey Keitel. Let me tell you a

[00:25:33] secret right now. I think it's we got Kyle. I don't know, Kyle, how you are generally where you generally fall on Keitel, but I'm looking at his production credits, his IMDB. In between

[00:25:46] The Piano and Holy Smoke, he was in 24 movies. And only one of them is like Get Shorty. Like, you know, a couple of them are tiny roles, but most of them are big roles. He just was

[00:26:03] everywhere. After a long career, after like, you know, obviously like his early stuff and the Duelists, right? You know, and stuff like that, you know, like after a long and steady career that peaks with like the Bugsy nomination, Thelma and Louise and The Piano and Reservoir Dogs,

[00:26:22] right? After that, he was just in everything and was working constantly. It's hard to remember. Culture was saturated with Keitel in a lot of shitty movies or movies that didn't go anywhere, but like also some good ones. Where are you on Keitel, Kyle?

[00:26:38] Well, now when he pops up in something, you're like, Harvey Keitel, where have you been? Which was not the experience in the 90s. In the 90s, it's just like, I mean, some of these, you know, Rising Sun, Monkey Trouble,

[00:26:50] I'm not reading them all, but you know, Pulp Fiction, Smoke and Blue in the Face, obviously. Clockers, which he's great in. From Dusk Till Dawn, Copland, Fairy Tale, A True Story, where he plays Harry Houdini, you know, and then like Finding Graceland, which is like

[00:27:07] some other Elvis movie where he plays out, and then a million other things that I've never heard of. Right. U571, the year after this, U571, he plays Satan in Little Nikki. He does, he's good.

[00:27:21] Right. I think there's a part maybe of just like, it took him that long to finally achieve that sort of status that like Pacino and De Niro and his contemporaries had had for so

[00:27:36] long. You know, like he obviously like kept working in the 80s, but it's like he was doing a lot of like James Toback movies that didn't really make an impact. Right? Yeah. He obviously does Last Temptation of Christ, which is big, but it's such a controversial movie.

[00:27:51] Two Jakes is like a fucking belly flop, you know, getting dubbed in fucking Saturn 3. Like a lot of his good movies don't really go anywhere. And then he has some notable flops. And then, yeah, you just look at it and you're like 91, Thelma and Louise, Bugsy, huge hit,

[00:28:07] finally gets his sort of like career Oscar nomination. Then the next year, Reservoir Dogs, Bad Lieutenant, Sister Act. And then the year after that, The Piano. It's just like, OK, finally, you get, you're in paycheck mode, Harvey. You finally have raised your quote.

[00:28:20] You're both in successful like populist films and Oscar films again. And then yeah, as you said, he just fucking dines out. Okay, but I do think part of it is that he was very, he wasn't, I mean, maybe with the studio

[00:28:33] movies motivated by that paycheck and cashing in, but he was eminently castable in small indies for all of the 90s, which is why he does appear in so many of the movies that we associate with that

[00:28:43] 90s boom, you know, to even do Reservoir Dogs and to keep doing those kinds of films is why he worked that much. And Pacino and De Niro were not doing that. Right. The Reservoir Dogs thing, a crucial, right. That's like, you know, one of the early Sundance

[00:28:57] successes. That's one of the early 90s indie boom movies. And he's not only the star, but he's why it happened. Him like lending his name to it was why it got money. Yeah. So then, right. He becomes

[00:29:08] sort of almost an indie movie mascot. Maybe we should do Smoke It Blue in the face on the Patreon. I know your dad produced those movies. Yeah, they're great movies. Yeah. Yeah, they are great movies.

[00:29:19] There is, I think, sort of this mythology to the fact that it's like he was like Scorsese's guy, right? It's like here's like the great American filmmaker of a generation. He found this fucking

[00:29:29] guy and he became like his avatar for years. And then he sort of goes on to, you know, De Niro becomes more the face of everything and whatever. But it is this like I think filmmakers starting

[00:29:41] out developing their voices, he becomes a guy who sort of like helps you get your grounding. You know, you want Harvey Keitel in your first couple movies. Yeah. And even though I do think that he's sort of like tentative and ill at ease in the first part

[00:29:56] of Holy Smoke, when I was trying to sort of mentally recast him with other guys around that time, I thought, well, but do they would any of them kind of bring what he brings when he's in

[00:30:06] a dress and begging for her at the end of that movie? Because then you're not just playing with him in the movie, you're playing with him in all those other movies. That's the guy who's in the

[00:30:15] dress. And you know, outside of like De Niro, there are few men of that era that would have had that much heft in that kind of cinematic image, I think. And he's obviously someone Campion totally trusts, you know, and like he gets her process and he

[00:30:33] only talks about her in the most glowing terms. So like, in a movie like this, that's obviously going to be, you know, working very intensely with actors in a very sort of pressurized scene. Like he, you know, he makes sense. She knows he's gonna do whatever, like whatever.

[00:30:51] And two things building off of what you said, Kyle. One, literally the image of him, right? He just has so much visual power aside from his like legacy as an actor. He just looks so

[00:31:04] fucking striking, right? Which I think for like Gene Campion, he's also like a piece of art direction. You're never going to get someone who looks as interesting as him, especially in the multiple forms this guy has to go through. And then the second thing is beyond what you're

[00:31:19] talking about of sort of like, well, he does have the weight and the reputation and the iconography as an actor, but someone like De Niro, it would be oppressive. He is not as much of like an untenable

[00:31:34] movie star to where you're not going to be able to mold him that fucking much. You're never going to be able to get out of your head. This is Robert De Niro doing this, you know, whereas like this is

[00:31:45] Harvey Keitel doing this doesn't put it in quotes. It gives it some weird power. I don't know. It's fascinating movie. Yes. Let's switch to Winslet, though. Let's talk Winslet. And then I want you

[00:32:02] to... We need to go into how this movie gets made because you got the dossier open. I'm kind of fascinated. I mean, I'll tell you it's not as shocking as you might think. And it's because

[00:32:11] Gene Campion made The Piano. So she just went to a little man by the name of Harvey Weinstein and said like, I want to make a movie about like a cult, you know, someone who's a culty programmer

[00:32:23] falling in love with his subject, his client. And Harvey Weinstein was like, sounds good. I don't think this movie was extraordinarily expensive. But it was a blank check in terms of it was just

[00:32:35] reputation. It's a blank check. It's just an idea she had, you know, and that was enough because it's like, hey, Gene Campion, you just made a movie that won three Oscars. You're the second

[00:32:46] woman ever nominated for Best Director. What do you want to do? And she's like, I want to do Portrait of a Lady. I want to do this cult movie. And she had a third idea that never came to

[00:32:54] fruition. The budget for this movie was $15 million, which is pretty high, I guess, for 1999. But you know, obviously it's got location, you know, they went to India. It's got yeah, yeah. But that's so good. So, you know, but it was really just a total

[00:33:12] blank check situation of like she wanted to do this movie with her sister who co-wrote it with her. And the other factor, of course, is, as we said, she's getting the first follow up movie from the female lead of the most successful movie of all time.

[00:33:28] Well, you know, that's true. But they like, it's not she was not like off like they auditioned her like, you know, it's like, she auditioned like 500 actresses. I think people were desperate to be in

[00:33:40] this movie. Yeah, which, you know, again, it speaks to her clout at that moment. Like, so I think tons of big actresses were trying out for the role. And let me find her quote about Winslet, because it's, you know, it's very complimentary. But basically, once Winslet came in,

[00:34:00] she was like, yeah, this is what I want. This is like, you know, Kytel had been her choice from the start. But here, let me find the exact quote. Do do do. Winslet, by the way, who rules? Have you ever interviewed her Kyle?

[00:34:15] No, I never have. She seems like a great interview, I will say, because all the quotes in our dossier about this movie are phenomenal. Like, basically, very candid. Yes, right. She is 23 when they're filming this movie, which is mind boggling.

[00:34:34] All right, so here's Winslet. So they brought her in and they, you know, they read with her and then they had her read against Kytel. Okay. And she was immediately basically holding her own and Campion says like, some of the girls we saw

[00:34:46] were wonderful. They loved the mind games. They had no idea what could happen losing yourself in a power struggle with someone. I'm terrified of going down that line. But when Kate read, I knew

[00:34:55] she was the one there's a real balance of energy with them. So I guess it was like she could stick up against Kytel. Sure. You know, she's a very formidable opponent for him. And I guess maybe some of the actresses they were seeing wasn't worth so much.

[00:35:08] This is why I bring up her being 23. She feels like a fucking elder statesman already at this point where you're just like, I mean, we're obviously viewing it through the prism of today,

[00:35:18] right? But I just even when this movie came out, I was like, Oh, of course, Kate Winslet is commonly thought of as one of the great living actors. And it's like, she's 23. She already has two Oscar nominations. She gets two more before she's 30.

[00:35:30] I wonder too, if she doesn't feel somewhat older, or more veteran at that point, because you just seen her opposite Leonardo DiCaprio who reads younger than her in Titanic. So to go from that

[00:35:42] situation to opposite Harvey Kytel, who was 60 when this came out is a real wild flip. It's so wild. He looks good for 60. He looks incredible. Are you kidding? He looks really good in this movie. But the age gap is pronounced. But yeah, I mean,

[00:36:01] as you're saying, Graef, she was an actress with such... Right. She was so precocious in a way. Like, you know, obviously, this deep in her career, which she hasn't even made like 10 movies yet.

[00:36:13] She's already a double nominee. She's been, you know, like she's right. She's a huge deal. Compare that precociousness with say, Jennifer Lawrence, right? Who obviously has a run of getting cast in roles that are clearly meant for women who are older than her. And everyone's like,

[00:36:28] we're just gonna let her play a character that should be 30 something at 23, because she seems wise beyond her years, right? But you're always watching it going, she seems wise beyond her years, not she is believably the person who has had this amount of life experience.

[00:36:46] Whereas Kate Winslet, I'm just like, you don't seem precocious. You know, you seem just like completely solid and grounded, and wise period. Yes. Well, Graef, let me ask you this. Do you think, do you buy her as 19 in this movie?

[00:37:04] This is the other thing. I mean, it's... I think she always reads older than she is. And I'm not even talking at a visual level. I do think it's the reason why I think the reader is her worst

[00:37:17] performance, because I don't think she can play on intelligent. I think she is just too smart an actor. And the reader is so based around this idea that she sort of is emotionally and psychologically stunted, that I just constantly refuse to buy anything that's happening on screen, right?

[00:37:37] And so I think even like you're watching Heavenly Creatures, and you're like, this has to be a 21 year old playing a 16 year old, you know? I think especially for the first chunk of her career,

[00:37:47] she always plays as this is probably an actor five years older than the character who is pulling it off well enough. And then in this case, right, I guess she is four years older

[00:37:59] than the character. And it feels like she reads five years older than she is in real life. I mean, I think you need it because of what David said of like, she needs to be holding her own

[00:38:13] against Kytel. And she is inherently young and youthful. But I think that's part of the interesting balance of casting her is that she can very easily read as more mature than him in scenes.

[00:38:27] Well, just the whole concept of holding your own against Kate Winslet is a formidable challenge for a lot of actors, you know, I think even on Mare of Easttown, part of the suspense was not

[00:38:37] just like, you know, the culmination, the resolution of the mystery, but watching these various men like Evan Peters and Guy Pearce kind of go up against her. And you the viewer are kind of

[00:38:50] judging like, are they worthy of her not worthy of Mare, but even like worthy of kind of like going toe to toe with her energy? Can you do that? I think that's part of the reason that Guy Pearce

[00:39:01] is cast in that kind of nothing role. I know he was like a last minute fill in, but also they've worked together before and he can like, sort of go toe to toe with her and not a lot of men can

[00:39:14] in a way that it feels evenly matched, especially for a movie like this, where it's so much about power dynamics and this, you know, battle of the sexes. That's the sort of energy you want. And

[00:39:25] she Yeah, she brings it utterly. She has so much composure as an actor that she can never play low status entirely, you know, and so you need to put up against someone who can really hold their

[00:39:37] own against her because she's never going to be able to really truly seem under anyone's thumb. You know, at best, you have someone kind of matching her. She has had a weird recent career.

[00:39:49] I'm now looking at Mare of Easttown was sort of a great big comeback for her. Because I guess because like Kyle is saying it's sort of worthy of her stature in that way of like

[00:40:02] she's playing someone with a reputation in that show, right? Like she's the old star from high school. Like, you know, like she's kind of everyone. She walks into a bar and everyone's

[00:40:11] kind of like, and that worked for her. And I feel like that worked for her in Ammonite, which is not a movie I liked, but I thought she was good again at playing someone who's got

[00:40:22] decades of history behind her. She fucking goes down to the beach and she gets her fossils. If you want to have a love affair with her around that, that's fine. But apart from that, The Mountain Between Us, Wonder Wheel, Collateral Beauty, The Dressmaker, post-Steve Jobs, I feel

[00:40:43] like it has been tough for Hollywood to find her. These are roles that on paper you're like, I can see why these appealed, but I want more for her. Look at the run between Reader and Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs almost functions as a comeback for her,

[00:40:59] right? Because it's like Reader, Revolutionary Road, the same year people thought Revolutionary Road was going to be her Oscar. Then the Reader obviously gets the nomination in the category no one expected she wins. Right. But it's just this element of like, she's fucking overdue.

[00:41:11] They're going to give her the award for one of these two movies this year. She wins both at the Globes. She gets her Oscar. Then she doesn't do anything for three years. Mildred Pierce for

[00:41:20] HBO with Todd Haynes is her big passion. Is that when she maybe got remarried and had another kid as well? Isn't that sort of in that period there? I don't know. Maybe not actually.

[00:41:29] That's part of it. I think it's also that she had been working so much, like she essentially did two or three movies a year almost every year. Mildred Pierce was like a big long thing that she

[00:41:40] produced that she willed into existence, that she had to get off the ground. But then that same year is Carnage and Contagion, which like she's very good in Contagion, but she's sort of just like supporting the group. Right? It's like not the showy role, but she's excellent,

[00:41:56] excellent, excellent in it. And then Carnage is like a weird misfire sort of all around. Although you don't put that on her. Yeah, but that makes sense. Because it was a hot play. It's a big... Totally. Like that's... You get that. Right. And then Labor Day.

[00:42:11] Two years after that. Labor Day, don't forget, David, that she has the segment movie 43 where she goes on a date with Hugh Jackman who has testicles on his face. Yes. I mean, I've never seen it, but I'm aware of it.

[00:42:22] Which one of those two actors do you think signed on for that segment first? Do you get Jackman because you have Winslet or do you get Winslet because you have Jackman? Yeah, I think it was Jackman because he wanted to be funny. No, I think... Right.

[00:42:32] Because that was the segment that got the movie made. They produced that as a spec and it was the entire... Sending that around Hollywood as a reel of like, look, we got these two really

[00:42:44] classy highbrow actors doing fucking Kentucky Fried Movie. And off of that, they got other people to sign on for shoots. That was like a self-produced fucking proof of concept thing. So that is the same year as Labor Day. And then the following year is Divergent,

[00:43:02] Little Chaos, which she obviously does for Rickman, right? Who she just loved thoroughly. That movie's good. And then she does Divergent Insurgent. She did Divergent. By the time Steve Jobs comes out, you're like, oh right, fucking

[00:43:19] Kay Winslet, like grand dame of the fucking movie screen. And then it's back to like, Dressmaker's weird. Triple nine, I think she's good in, but it's a bug nuts performance. That's a weird performance in a weird movie. Yes. But this is my thing. Collateral Beauty is insane. Right.

[00:43:37] I mean, she's always been someone who takes really weird roles and takes on really ambitious projects. So it's not like there's been a huge shift in her career. It's just, I guess, that the parts get different. I don't know.

[00:43:51] Do you think there's someone in her age bracket who is taking the roles that she should have been getting? She's getting market corrected. I mean, who is in her, like, who are her contemporaries? I will say...

[00:44:03] If you want someone to cry and scream and suffer, then you'd go to Naomi Watts at that period of time. Right. Naomi Watts is at least trying to horn in on her territory for a bit. Yeah.

[00:44:14] Kay Winslet, because of Titanic, will always be a major star. So it is like, and you know that she can do just about anything. So it is like a question of like, so why wasn't she getting really good movies then? And to be fair,

[00:44:27] she was working with directors who were acclaimed. She always sought out interesting directors. Interesting roles. She's often in a weird movie by said interesting director. Sure. Like Holy Smoke? Right. And then I guess she would often gravitate towards dark and depressing material,

[00:44:52] like Little Children or David Gale or All the King's Men. And then even when she pops up in The Holiday, The Holiday is such an insult to her as much as we enjoy The Holiday. Because not

[00:45:07] only... It's not that it saddles her with Jack Black. I love Jack Black. He's a cutie. Sure. It's that it saddles her with no romance, right? Her and Jack Black don't even kiss until the final frame of the movie. Right. It's mostly about Eli Wallach. Yeah.

[00:45:19] Yeah. And she's just sort of like, oh, this is lovely, like the whole time. And it just kind of feels like this weird practical joke that's being played on her. I don't know.

[00:45:28] The only time she's done something like that, and if I remember correctly from when we did that episode, did the research at the time, she sort of took it as like it was one of those things that

[00:45:37] actors get into where they're like, I want to prove I can do this. No one thinks I'm funny. Right. I'd like to see inside that. No one thinks I could be in a rom-com. I want to loop back to the beginning of her career. But

[00:45:48] to your point, Kyle, about who are her contemporaries who are taking the parts that she should be playing, I'd argue that I would argue there aren't parts I can think of in the last

[00:45:58] five years where I'm like she should have gotten that. Like it might be the dearth of the roles that she's fit for if she doesn't want to play fucking Nova Prime, you know, like if she doesn't

[00:46:09] want to. I mean, she and she did her version of that in Divergence, certainly. But like, I feel like I have read multiple interviews with actresses in her age bracket, who said like,

[00:46:21] when I saw it, Mare of Easttown, I got so pissed off. Like that is the exact type of project and part I am begging my agent to find and she fucking got it. And now I just keep on saying like, why

[00:46:32] can't I find my Mare of Easttown? Like it feels like she got the thing that everyone in her class kind of wanted. I wonder too, if she wasn't in the wake of Titanic, maybe a little hesitant to do other

[00:46:45] romantic projects. You know, in fact, with something like Holy Smoke, she's really subverting that. Because you would think having started one of the most iconic romances of all time, that she'd have a few more on her resume and she has very few more. And some of them like,

[00:47:01] you know, Labor Day are not great. Well, when she's playing romance, it's like that or Little Children where it's like deeply depressed. Like she's this broken, horribly lonely woman who starts an ill-advised love affair. You know, she never does like great swooping romance. But a hot love affair.

[00:47:21] Hot, yes. I mean, she's certainly... They're on that poster. She is more comfortable with her sexuality, I feel like, than a lot of actresses. Right. Which is the best thing about her. She rules.

[00:47:32] Right. And odd forms of sexuality. I mean, like sort of in a Campion-esque way of like sexuality as behavior rather than as like titillation for audience. Or both. Or both.

[00:47:42] I have a great quote to read from her later on that. But I also I will point out that, right, with Hideous Kinky, she did pick that project before, like she made that before Titanic. But she knew she had Titanic.

[00:47:56] So and obviously, she was already an Oscar nominee. And she was about, you know, basically like her mainstream moment is happening. And she says she took Hideous Kinky over a big budget movie that she doesn't name.

[00:48:07] So I do think a lot of the time, and that like everyone on her team was like, what are you doing? You know, like a lot of the time, perhaps there was an easier

[00:48:16] or more commercial role being, you know, forces of nature, you know, like some just kind of like total, you know, down the middle. This is like a Hollywood rom-com. The most famous thing she turned down is Shakespeare in Love, obviously. Right.

[00:48:28] Some of the other stuff she turned down that we've have listed is Autumn in New York, which Winona Ryder gets. Winona and Gere. Yeah. Yeah. And Anna and the King, which Jodie Foster ends up doing with Chayenne Fadde. Big romances.

[00:48:41] Right, right. And I think it was often her being like, I don't want to do the same thing, or whatever. Well, you know, I mean, I always hesitate to do what I'm about to do, which is ascribe a little

[00:48:50] too much control and foresight to an actor's career. So much of the time, it's just about, well, what's the project? What kind of window do I have? Let me just go to it. Right. There's so much weird forces.

[00:49:03] Yeah. If you look at something like Holy Smoke, it's not just defying expectations of what Campion was doing in that point in her career, but also obviously Winslet too. So it's kind of

[00:49:12] this double pop cultural force of, okay, you think you know us? Let's throw you a curveball. You're right, Kyle, that very often is just what's the next thing I can get. But she was, she had a bird in the hand post Titanic, right?

[00:49:26] She had a freaking birdcage in her hand. Yeah, she had tons of birds in the hand. She had a fucking aviary in her hand. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting because famously, her and Leo are both like 15th choices for Titanic, right? And another thing we sort of

[00:49:43] haven't brought up here because it sort of flooded back to me while watching this movie. I so completely put out mine because it's so absurd now to think about, but there was like

[00:49:52] so much shit at the time about her being like, quote unquote, full figured or chubby, right? That she did not look like other leading women where I think this was a period of time where

[00:50:05] women were particularly skinny on screen. But I also think she would talk about often having these meetings where people would say like, you could have this role if you lose 15 pounds. And she pushed against that entirely. And I think to some degree pushed against even pursuing that

[00:50:22] entire type of role. But there was like people would fucking make fat jokes about her after Titanic, which is absurd to think about. Let me read this quote. I'm going to read it now

[00:50:33] because it's so good. It's from a Premier magazine interview. She was paranoid that she didn't look good while making this film. So like, you know, she was worried about that because obviously she's

[00:50:42] naked in the film and she's constantly in states of undress. And then she saw the film and she thought, shit, I look good. Kate Winslet. I honestly would describe myself physically as

[00:50:52] someone who is shapely but slim. I mean, look, she juts her ribs out. It's an absolute joke. I have a normal woman's body. I like having a good pair of tits on me and a good ass. If I didn't,

[00:51:03] I don't think I'd feel attractive. You just don't get enough quotes like this from Hollywood actors. I love it. I love it. This is what's so fascinating about her. I mean, we're talking about like how

[00:51:14] lofty the challenges of trying to go toe to toe with Kate Winslet on screen. But her entire reputation is like she's kind of no nonsense. She's super kind. She's just hardworking. She's not some like scary, obsessive method actor. She's very open and sort of bawdy in interviews.

[00:51:33] She's like deflated her own persona faster than anybody. It's fascinating because she doesn't carry herself with this sense of like, she's not Cate Blanchett. She's not Meryl Streep. But yet she's thought of on that echelon. Is Blanchett kind of a competitor, even though

[00:51:55] Blanchett is a good 10 years older than her probably or maybe a little less. They came up at the same time in terms of prestige projects. Right. So yeah, Blanchett is a type.

[00:52:06] We did. On some episode where you were pulling your rank about the fact that you were posting regularly on the awards watch forums and I was only a lurker. But that the narrative at the

[00:52:15] time was that I'm sorry before they had the cease and desist. That the narrative at the time was that her two Cates were in similar positions. And by and large, despite making weird choices, Winslet on balance was handling it okay. And Blanchett had kind of blown it until

[00:52:33] the Aviator. Right. Blanchett had a tough time between Elizabeth and the Aviator. I mean, that's just true. She was seen as the sort of, you know, it's like, yeah, I mean, we don't need to

[00:52:47] get into Blanchett right now. But, you know, Pushington, The Gift, The Man Who Cried, Chipping News, Bandits, like, you know, like obviously Lord of the Rings. She's incredible. But like, when she had a lead role Oscar project, it was like The Missing or Veronica Garren. Sure.

[00:53:01] Where it would be like kind of an also ran, you know, even though it had the festival release and all that, like, and then and then whatever, she clicks a little later. They're very different actresses, obviously. Hollywood definitely thinks about the very differently, but they were competitors.

[00:53:16] At the time they were. Yeah. There is something though, about Kate and Holy Smoke that made me think of Cate Blanchett, which is the scene of Kate Winslet in this movie where she's in the car singing Alanis. Like scene early on wearing a bindi. Great scene. Bindi.

[00:53:34] Yep, much, much to impact to unpack there. But I wrote an article for the Times, I think last spring about one of my favorite subjects, which is Oscar winning actresses reacting emotionally to opera, which you see in Moonstruck, Pretty Woman. Motherfucker.

[00:53:52] And watching Kate Winslet sing Alanis in this movie reminded me of when Cate Blanchett sings Total Eclipse of the Heart and Bandits. Not a great movie, but I still remember that scene. Good performance. And then I realized... A very fun performance.

[00:54:04] No, wait. There is there is a corollary to this that I also love, which is Oscar winning actresses singing in their cars. You've got Nicole Kidman singing Joni Mitchell in Practical Magic. You've got Julianne Moore singing Lady Gaga in After the Wedding. Julia Roberts has done

[00:54:20] this in multiple movies. It's a thing. Singing along to the radio is pretty much always going to win me over, I'll say. So simple, but it works. Right. Very, very simple. Exciting. Jerry Maguire. There's so many great radio scenes. Okay, holy smokes. So yeah, but...

[00:54:44] I'm sorry, David, but just because we've been sort of talking around everywhere the direction I just want to like read in chronological order. Okay? Heavenly Creature is obviously her debut movie. Wonderful performance. Then Kid and King Arthur's Court, right? But that same year, Sense and Sensibility,

[00:55:00] Oscar nomination. Here we go. Someone to look out for, right? Then Jude and Hamlet. Then the year after that is Titanic. Then Hideous Kinky comes out the following year, which is obviously never a movie that was going to break through. But I remember there being this

[00:55:16] question of like, is the Titanic bubble so huge that anything they're in now is going to connect? I remember seeing a Hideous Kinky trailer where at the end of the trailer in theaters,

[00:55:29] there was a card saying that Kate Winslet was going to be doing AOL chats with fans. That sounds fun. And I was just like, they're presenting her as if she's like a teeny bopper figure of obsession,

[00:55:41] where they might be able to get them to see this movie about a single mother going on a spiritual quest. And then she makes a different spiritual quest movie that is like a bizarre sex comedy, right? And then Quills, Enigma, two movies that don't really exist. Christmas Carol,

[00:55:58] the movie animated. And then Iris 2001, she's back in sort of the Oscar game. She has things that miss after that, but then you're in this run of like, David Gale is obviously a fucking pan out, but then Eternal Sunshine, Finding Neverland,

[00:56:12] Romance of Cigarettes is a pan out. Little Children's another nomination. All the King's Men is a pan out. Holiday is like a medium hit. And then she fucking wins the Oscar for the reader. Can we talk about that spiritual quest, Griff?

[00:56:27] You know, I was trying to think back to that era, how it was presented in that era, and then also how we look at it this year through our sort of, you know, hopefully more sort of

[00:56:36] culturally tuned eyes. But that really was an era of like cultural tourism by white women in India, you know, not just her singing along to Alanis, but Alanis thanking India in Thank You, Gwen Stefani

[00:56:49] with her bindi and her sari, you know, it was a real thing at that time. And there's a lot of movies in the I mean, obviously, her, her co star Leo is in The Beach,

[00:56:59] which is sort of a movie about like, the dark side of white tourism in Asia. Like, and there's a lot of other movies that are on along those like, what do you call it? God, I'm forgetting. So you know, Another Day in Paradise. Seven Years in Tibet.

[00:57:14] No, but those movies that are about like, people getting stuck in prisons, and you know, come on, help me out here. You're talking about the dark versions of Seven Years in Tibet, the ones that are commenting on subverting that. Yeah. What am I thinking of? Yeah.

[00:57:29] I'm looking at this now. Return to Paradise, sorry, is the movie I was thinking of. Right. And which is Vince Vaughn and Anne Heche and Joaquin and there but there's another frickin prison, you know, like Thai prison movie at that anyway. But yes, Winslet.

[00:57:47] Those aesthetics. Yes, they're very dominant in the 90s. I think when Kate, I started with Jane and Anna Campion wrote this movie, they went to India and talked to a lot of people, they wanted to talk to like transplants in ashrams, like to try and get

[00:58:03] the mindset down. A lot of and Hare Krishna people and stuff like that. Like they were trying to figure out like, well here she's very, as Campion says, she's fascinated with contemporary spirituality. She's like, I'm interested in like the Tibetan monk who is very spiritual,

[00:58:21] but it's an alcoholic like things you can't put together like that. You know, that's I guess, those sort of weird clashes rather than just focusing on these very, you know, pure aesthetic

[00:58:33] goals or whatever. She said a lot of young Israelis in India, she said after having served in the army. Yeah. You know, culture tends to exist on like a 25-30 year cycle in terms of nostalgia and

[00:58:47] reevaluation and shit. And I do think there was a 90s thing in particular of sort of like reexamining hippie culture and the tenants of it and the like idealism of that time. It's sort of contrast to Gen X and the sort of like desire to find alternative

[00:59:07] modes of spirituality and all that sort of shit like that was a thread. Oh yeah. Yeah. I was going to say even the like trippier scenes and all of the like VFX of the time

[00:59:20] and all of the like, you know, iconography that they're using in it, it feels so of the moment. Like, yeah, it's great. I actually really love seeing those like ridiculous graphics now. It was so nostalgic for them.

[00:59:35] This movie is so bizarre because like everything about the 30 first 30 or 40 minutes feels so specific and you're kind of like, huh, this is not what I expected to be. And right when you

[00:59:44] settle into it, the movie sort of pulls the rug out and changes its whole fucking demeanor. But you do have like the soundtrack is almost exclusively Neil Diamond. Love that. You have this odd manic comic tone, right? Like all these quirky characters.

[00:59:59] She calls this her comedy. Like when she reflects on this movie. When she reflects on this movie. Very much so. Are you kidding? Absolutely the first half unequivocally. Yeah. There's comic beats out of almost every scene in the first 40 minutes.

[01:00:12] It's, you know, and it's wild the way it's shot. Not just, you know, the very late 90s-ness of the cinematography and the vibe. But, you know, the matrixy green text that you'll see sometimes. And you have to shut that down.

[01:00:30] You know, she's a campion from New Zealand, but this movie set in Australia is going, I don't think full Australia, not full Baz Luhrmann, but like maybe like PJ Hogan level. In the sort of, you know, willingness to kind of push it. Yeah.

[01:00:51] And George Miller. And we've talked about like a lot of that weird manic sensibility of 90s Australian cinema. There's also though, like you talk about that waterbed moment. I'm not putting you on the spot, David. But have you watched her short yet on Criterion?

[01:01:08] Nope. No, haven't watched them. Okay. So Passionless Moments, which is her third sort of short or the second. I don't remember the chronology. The one she co-writes with Gerard Lee, who she does

[01:01:20] Sweetie with and then later Top the Lake with. That one is this sort of black and white, like collection of moments that are sort of almost like one panel comics. Like it's almost Roy

[01:01:31] Anderson-esque. And a lot of her compositions in the first 30 minutes of the movie are like that, you know, even just like the parents at the waterbeds, a perfect example of that, where you're just like you have this like weird depth of detail, density in frame,

[01:01:47] where there might be like three or four different funny things happening that have nothing to do with the main thrust of what the scene's about, or the dialogue, you know? It's just wackiness. And you know, it comes from that part of the world. Affectionate wackiness. Yeah.

[01:02:02] Oh, very much so. Right. I think that's why it works. It never feels mean-spirited. Not weaponized wackiness. Right. But it's, you know, that kind of tone is unusual, especially for American audiences. In the Mad Max book, George Miller's wife, Margaret Sixel, who cut the movie, she's the

[01:02:19] editor, she won the Oscar for it, talked about how Warner Brothers wanted to cut anything that felt wacky, you know? And Mad Max is bursting at the seams with things that could be considered wacky.

[01:02:31] And it creates this kind of razor's edge of what the fuck is happening? And the same to some degree in Holy Smoke in the first 30 minutes, especially if you think you're going to get something that's

[01:02:43] along the lines of Piano Portrait of a Lady, she disabuses you of that extremely and entirely. Speaking of PJ Hogan, you know, yeah, like her wacky sister-in-law Yvonne, and then her brother Tim and his boyfriend Yanni, like, the way they're costumed, the way they—that's all very Muriel's

[01:03:03] wedding, right? Like this sort of like, fun bunch of oddballs kind of vibe to the extended family and everything, which is like, kind of helps keeps the stakes. Like there's a version of this movie

[01:03:18] that is way more intense in terms of like, we've got to get her out of there. And we've got to like, lock her in a house and like, work on her, right? Like, and the stakes always feel kind of casual

[01:03:28] here. Like they almost prank her home. And like, you know, and then she's almost as mad at them as they are at her when she finally discovers that like, she's been basically like, lured home

[01:03:41] under mean pretenses. And yeah, yeah, it's goofy. Well, even when her mother goes to kind of extricate her from India, when we see Kate in that scene, they're not really like, leaning into it or

[01:03:54] satirizing or parodying her attitude. She actually seems like fairly casual and like, and happy in her sense of enlightenment. And Kate's not going too hard on what another actress could consider

[01:04:07] like punchlines to play in that scene. She is very at ease, and it's appealing. And so the stakes of the thing feel very different because you know, it's kind of a flip in that scene of like, oh,

[01:04:20] does she really need to be pried from this? She seems like fine. Doesn't seem as bad as what they were imagining. It feels like she'll figure it out. You know what I mean? Like, even if she does

[01:04:32] like sort of pal around with this group for a while, it feels like she'll probably figure it out on her own, right? And like, you know, go off and do something different later. I don't know,

[01:04:41] like there are never there's never the real danger of like, oh my god, she's about to go, you know, drink Kool-Aid, right? Like, you know, it's gonna be something terrifying. For sure. Campion leans on like the sort of, you know, satirizing how these white suburbanites feel

[01:04:58] about Indian culture, but I don't know that she ever pushes as hard on the pedal of how Kate Winslet's character feels. No, and Kate Winslet's characters present to us right with her friend recounting to the parents her sort of getting brainwashed and sucked in by this. And

[01:05:15] that representation we see, which is sort of the story version of it is so heightened and cartoony. And then when you get to her, and she's just kind of a person, right? Like, as you said, Kyle,

[01:05:26] like she's not playing brainwash. She's not playing like manic. She's also not playing too low key, where it's like, oh, this woman's completely normal. I mean, it's one of those things like we were talking about this in the piano episode, but that so much of Campion's

[01:05:41] strength is what you were saying, David, the her ability to sort of like organically develop a scene with actors. Right. And I think find unconventional energy within a scene. I mean, the energy contained within any single Jane Campion scene is usually more interesting than a lot of

[01:05:59] movies in total, whether or not the films are entirely successful. Right. And she just finds moments that are bizarre ways to throw things off the hump. But I think when her movies connect

[01:06:11] most with people, it is things like the piano or power of the dog or Bright Star possibly where it's like, I know what type of movie this is. Right. I have seen these types of stories adapted

[01:06:23] before, you know, period pieces sort of align with a genre that usually can be kind of stayed and like built around stiff upper lips. And she's imbuing it with this odd kind of life.

[01:06:36] This weird undercurrent of sexuality and humor and tension, all these things that make them harder to put your fingers around. And then when she's doing that for this movie where the entire premise is so

[01:06:48] complex and wackadoo to begin with, and the movie is so unquantifiable in genre, I think for a lot of people, they're just like, I don't there's too much fucking shit going on. And I also think not

[01:06:59] to harp on it, but it's just you consider the rug pull of what people think a Jane Campion movie is at this point. Right. And then you get to the first 40 minutes of this movie, which goes so goddamn

[01:07:10] hard and you have a percentage of the audience that probably is like, I'm fucking out done. This is not my tempo. Right. I don't fucking get this. And then whatever percentage of people are

[01:07:20] able to reacclimate to the tone, then she sort of pulls the rug out and she's like, no, I'm going to now take this like pretty fucking seriously. I'm not going to remove the wackiness. It's all

[01:07:30] going to be there, but I'm going to play everything more straight and dramatically. It's like they're like two different flips in this movie, in terms of how she's subverting the audience's expectation of

[01:07:42] what status quo is in this film, you know, it just in terms of tone. It's very bizarre movie also in terms of sex, not just in the obvious like power dynamics of version ways, but

[01:07:54] when we see Winslet's character naked, she also, you know, pees. In slow motion on her feet. And when we see Kytel and Winslet have sex, it is a split second. You see his ass as he's thrusting

[01:08:10] into her. And I think it's something like, she's saying like, don't come, don't come. Like it's a comic moment. And he's coming. And then don't they cut to an animal in the outback? Like right after

[01:08:21] that? I think they do. Yes. The sequencing of shots. I remember being incredibly bizarre there. Sorry, Kyle, you were saying? No. So I mean, it's like, you know, what you might want if this is

[01:08:30] being sold to you as a romance in the wake of Titanic, or even if you're sort of like titillated by the possibilities of these, you know, two good looking people with great bodies, it's not going

[01:08:40] to give you just that. It's going to smuggle a whole lot of other things into those moments. Okay, okay. So it's they're kissing, right? Oh, the kissing. Can we talk about that? Because the

[01:08:52] way she kisses him is so weird. And obviously, was directed like, it's almost like she's like a dog licking a face. It's so unusual to make out. Later, she has the scene where she teaches him

[01:09:06] how to kiss and perform cunnilingus. Yeah, step by step, which is so bizarre. But just this shot sequences is them kissing for the first time, then hard cut to his tush thrusting for like three

[01:09:18] seconds as she says don't come and he comes. Right? You like just see the two lines of like, her saying don't come and him going like, and then it cuts to an ostrich running at full speed.

[01:09:32] Which more movies ought to do. You can't go wrong with an ostrich. And the ostrich is like covered in like Christmas tinsel or something. Yes, right. And then it's right. They're following

[01:09:42] in the car with the antlers on it. Right, right. It is bizarre. But those things all happen within the span of like, eight seconds and that cuts back to the two of them naked in bed poise codal. This movie is wild.

[01:09:57] This movie is very wild. And doesn't really doesn't really care to hold its audience's hand, I guess is the best way to put that right? Like these swerves that have you know, that something's gonna go down but then there's like earlier scenes where like, you know, PJ

[01:10:23] Yvonne gives PJ PJ is Harvey Keitel a blowjob out of nowhere. Like, you know, like when they when they tell her to bring her a change of clothes. She's having a panic attack. He's like talking

[01:10:35] her through breathing exercises and then he continues to tell her breathe while she is sucking on his penis. Isn't that when she reveals the drawer? It's right after that. Yeah. Tape is tapings like the different celebrities. That is such a weird detail. She's got like a fucking

[01:10:51] collage with fucking Lawrence Fishburne at the center of it. Sometimes she holds up magazines mid sex. But to me, that sequence is very much of a piece with the themes that get revealed in the

[01:11:02] movie and maybe even a preview of them because, you know, even though he's telling her breathe, breathe, and she's on her knees, you know, ostensibly servicing him. I watched that scene and her scene describing her fantasy being like, Okay, this is a who actually has the power

[01:11:21] and the agency in both of those sex scenes. Her. She knows exactly what she wants out of, you know, sex with, with the guy that she's with. And she goes straight to Keitel knowing exactly what she

[01:11:35] wants out of that encounter to, you know, so it's always fascinating in both those scenes how the man reacts to a woman who has that agency, you know, the guy that she's hooking up with has no idea

[01:11:49] really, I don't think about her active fantasy life. And Keitel is just like, whatever, you know, this woman is throwing herself at me, but it's, he thinks of that as getting what he wants. And it's

[01:12:01] really, to me, it's her getting what she wants. And so it's setting up, you know, the the sort of agency and what he's supposed to do with it that wins its character has after they start

[01:12:12] having their sexual relationship. I also think of this movie is about anything. It's about the fact that human brains are fucking weird, right? Like so much of this movie is about the idea of like brainwashing and deprogramming, and people explaining their thoughts about how the brain

[01:12:31] works and how we process things and all of that. But also so much of it is just like, what, why do our sexual attractions play out the way that they do? You know, like, I mean, you're talking

[01:12:44] about another sort of expectation flip. But like, Piano is a movie where you would not believe at the 30 minute mark that you would accept her ending up with Harvey Keitel as a happy ending,

[01:12:57] right? That that will feel like a good emotional, healthy landing place for these characters and get you do. And then this movie, you're like, is she going to pull the shit with Keitel again?

[01:13:07] Is she going to make me think I should end up, she should end up with this woman. This woman should end up with Keitel who seems like completely wrong with her. And instead, it's sort of just constantly interrogating this thing of like their shift in which one

[01:13:19] holds the power in their relationship, as you said, Kyle, right? Who is sort of more intellectually in control versus who is more succumbing to their own libido. And then them trying to like constantly make sense of it after the fact,

[01:13:36] about why they even want to fuck each other. But it's, you know, there's a real power flip, you know, to to these dynamics that we're talking about that is sort of crucial to it, right? Like to the sort of charge, which is why Keitel is so

[01:13:52] well cast in both the Piano and Holy Smoke, even when he's out of place, I guess. Because someone sort of getting power over him is pretty remarkable. Does that make sense? Like, you know, that does actually land when that happens in either movie.

[01:14:10] Yeah, I mean, in the Piano, same thing, who has the power in those, in their arrangement, in their sexual scenes? Is it him? Is he setting the terms? Or is she? Is it a negotiation? Is it

[01:14:23] fair? Are they turned on by a power imbalance? You know, these are things that obviously come up a lot in Campion's work. But, but yeah, the way that they are presented here is very extreme,

[01:14:35] not even a tasteful period movie way, but in a really in your face late 90s way. There's this scene at the beginning that really stuck with me where it's the guy, what's it Stan, who's the guy who sort of helps them find Keitel and organizes the like...

[01:14:53] Yeah, the guy with glasses. Exactly. So his monologue, the end of his like big scene where he's sort of briefing on what they need to do, he says, the mind's a damn mystery. Why do people believe in God?

[01:15:04] Why do people believe they're in love? Why do I tell myself every day, you're fat mate. Today, I'm not gonna eat cake, butter or bread. And by lunchtime, I've done the lot.

[01:15:16] And then it's hard cut to the waterbed and them coming up with the plan to tell her that the dad is dying. Which her dad is, her dad taking the golf break immediately, by the way, is a great,

[01:15:31] great move by him. I love that. He could barely commit to the... And not to skip to the end. But the fact that just like in the final fucking letters, it's just

[01:15:38] like, yeah, of course, you know, as we all saw coming, he left my mom for the secretary, my mom's here at the ashram now. She's having a moment early on in the movie. So much of the movie is about, there's these patriarchal systems. And what are women supposed

[01:15:54] to do? How do they find their own agency within them? You know, I mean, whether it's the mother paying more attention to what Kate Winslet is up to than what her husband is doing, or, you know,

[01:16:04] religion and mysticism, period, you know, Keitel tells a story about, you know, the guru who just basically wanted to fuck him. And certainly that's one of their fears with Kate Winslet.

[01:16:17] You know, like, okay, is she going to indulge in some mass marriage? Is he even cute? You know, like these sorts of things. And how do you find your way when these systems and ideas and things

[01:16:30] that even feel so pure, religion, mysticism, etc., are really, you know, designed by men, and often do have a component of just trying to kind of, you know, reassert a power structure where a man is on top and takes what he wants.

[01:16:45] Keitel is the warhorse of this movie in the sense that everyone wants to fuck him. Right? It's just like people cannot stop. And you're sort of like, what's up? Right. And when you get to that guru scene where he's like, he takes my pecker out,

[01:16:57] he puts it in his hand, and he's upset that I don't cum. And that's why we had a falling out. It's just like, right, you're right. There's this weird exotic draw to this guy. Right? And just for context, War Horse is a movie

[01:17:11] where that reference is referencing where everyone wants to fuck the horse. Everyone wants to fuck the horse, as we all know. Just in case people hadn't listened to that episode. No, the thesis we established on War Horse in our episode with the great pilot Vero at is that

[01:17:24] everyone wants to fuck this horse. That's the thing that keeps the horse alive is people are like, why do I? There's something about, oh, I want to fuck it. That's what it is.

[01:17:31] And it's the same with Keitel's character in this movie. Everyone comes into contact with him as like, kind of weird. Oh, I think I want to touch his penis. If you described Harvey Keitel as a war horse, I would just accept that unblinkingly.

[01:17:45] I also think Lincoln Center could have for one night replaced the puppet with a naked Harvey Keitel on stage and the show would have worked. Oh my god. I don't know if it would have worked in a Spielberg movie.

[01:17:54] I don't know if it would have worked in a Spielberg movie. I don't know if it would have worked in a Spielberg movie. Yeah, I got a video of the Keitel performance. Just if you want that. I had it going.

[01:18:04] Um, not to zoom out too much, but sort of what you're talking about, Kyle, right? I do think that one of the central things she's examining in this movie is that we, society has evolved to a point where we spend so much time intellectualizing why we do the

[01:18:20] things that we do and trying to strategize about what types of things we want to do. What type of person we want to be, how we want to be perceived. Right. And someone like running off

[01:18:33] and joining a cult and submitting themselves to an unconventional sort of dogma is seen as the sort of thing where it's like, you don't do that. You're calling outside of the lines. That's not

[01:18:42] like, uh, that's unseemly, you know? Uh, this is how you're supposed to live your life. These sorts of structures, these sorts of things, you know, uh, having an open marriage and going to

[01:18:54] a spiritual retreat and all these sorts of things are seen as like, oh, are they going off, off the deep end a little bit? But like, the basic thing is we still are not to get too

[01:19:05] fucking like dormant philosophy about it. We're all just fucking stupid animals that have evolved to a point where we've come up with all these rules about how we behave and how we function,

[01:19:14] how we make sense of all of that. But like everything comes down to two basic impulses, which are procreation, self-preservation, right? By and large, almost everything you do is in one way or another based on one of those two things. And like these systems of power that are

[01:19:29] constructed ultimately often end up serving the people at the top of them in that way. And people look for answers in people, in systems, because when you stare down the barrel of like

[01:19:40] our consciousness that has evolved so far beyond what it probably should have, and we have too much internal thoughts, you're just like, it can't just be that I'm supposed to eat and find a cave to stay

[01:19:51] in and fuck people, right? There has to be more to it than that. And the more you try to sort of wind yourself up and finding other things, the less behavior maybe makes sense to you.

[01:20:01] Yeah. And it's interesting thing because, you know, I think she, the Kate Winslet character is sort of struggling with the idea of like, does she want to be told what to do? You know, I mean,

[01:20:10] she essentially is, even though she's rebelling against her upbringing, it's no coincidence that she's becoming sort of part of this spiritual retreat where she's rebranded, but also part of another sort of mass of people who are all doing the same thing when we see the suburbia, you know,

[01:20:30] the housing tract, absolutely everything looks exactly the same. But when she flips things on Harvey Keitel, who's also been telling her what to do, and like, you know, as a sort of control mode

[01:20:43] by which he lives by, and she's the one on top, and it's a cult of one, and she's the leader. Is that what she wants? I think primarily more than anything, she doesn't want to be her parents,

[01:20:54] right? She doesn't want to be your parents, she doesn't want to be your siblings. She's looking for a clear, alternative, distant path from that. The fact that Keitel also had his own experience in a similar sort of religious group is so fascinating because he's sort of

[01:21:11] coming out of it going like, I went through this shit. I sort of humored the idea that this might be the answer. And I realize these people are as full of shit as anyone else. Just come back to

[01:21:22] fucking normal society, right? But yes, she flips it on him in a way he hasn't before. And I think it's so telling there's a vulnerability to the moment when he's sort of saying like, you know,

[01:21:33] I used to be pretty. Like I used to be handsome. And it's like, she just slept with him. She initiated it. And yet he's still insecure about the fact that she doesn't find him attractive. Like he's sort of acknowledging, you probably fucked me because of weird psychosexual power

[01:21:52] dynamics at play now and whatever sort of animal magnetism I have. But I want you to know at one point I was conventionally handsome. You would have just slept with me because I was attractive.

[01:22:02] And she just immediately like laughs at him for that and mocks him for that. And he never recovers for the rest of the movie. Yeah, well, she's whittling him down just in the way that

[01:22:14] he was trying to, you know, trying to break her down and confronting her with images and ideas and you know, burning the sorry and all of that. She's doing it in a much more compressed time

[01:22:26] frame and really hitting him where he lives, which is that sense of male sexuality and, and privilege that comes along with it. And she dismantles it in front of him,

[01:22:35] and then puts him in the dress. So he takes the sorry from her, she puts him in the dress. The one time he really devastates her, I mean, he devastates her by showing her the film in a way,

[01:22:47] you know, like, you know, she makes her feel guilty, right? That's a little different. But when he writes be kind on her head, as is in my profile, as in my zoom background,

[01:22:56] like that seems to be the one thing that really gets through her armor in a weird way where she's like, come on, man. Like, you're saying I mean, like, like, like, for some reason, that is the

[01:23:07] most sort of spiritually damaging things she can hear. Yeah, in a way. And it's also him expressing his vulnerability in the same way that she expresses it by like, you know, that she spells

[01:23:19] out help he spells out be kind, like they can't even say these things out loud. I don't know. I thought that was interesting. Yeah, there's a Jane Campion quote. She said Ruth is beautiful

[01:23:28] intelligent. She's also young. That was a real point of entry for the character. I believe you tend to make people it made me anyway, very dogmatic and very brave. Young people keep us honest. They're so intolerant of anything hypocritical. You hear from kids all the time.

[01:23:41] The one thing they can't tolerate is hypocrisy, which also gives them problems with the contradictory or paradoxical nature of life. Anything that has a kind of overlapping or complex quality to it.

[01:23:51] So like, that's the thing that's going to hit her the hardest is if he makes her question whether or not she is inherently kind. Because that is suddenly calling into question her own sense of

[01:24:03] like honesty, right? Yes, right. Right. Which is what she's aspiring to more than anything, I guess. Right. I want to just be like, fucking free of all this bullshit and live a more honest life.

[01:24:16] It's interesting, though, because even though she's so relatable, and I think we're meant to sympathize with her, we do see her from Harvey Keitel's perspective throughout. In fact, film essentially introduces her to us in the same way she might as well be introduced to Keitel's

[01:24:32] character because we meet her when she's already enlightened. We meet her through other people, we don't really get to know her for her until she's already had this enlightenment. So who was

[01:24:42] she before this? Who is she maybe underneath it? We find that out as he does, which is interesting. So the I even I the idea that maybe her spiritual quest is to be kind or it's something that she

[01:24:55] needs to work on is not something that we go into the movie knowing, you know, or feel even very strongly, I would say in the first half hour. She's kind of unknowable throughout the entire

[01:25:08] movie. Now that's partly like Griffin said, you know, that is partly just being in your 20s. You are sort of unknowable in a weird way. To yourself. Yeah. She's inscrutable. I think, look,

[01:25:23] I like this movie. I think it is, you know, a blast and so different. But it is worth, you know, noting that this movie went over like a fucking brick. Like nobody liked this movie.

[01:25:33] Look, this is the kind of movie that I feel like I usually fucking reclaim per miniseries, like your higher learnings or whatever, where it's like, this is the crazy, tonally all over the place, unwieldy mess that I'm going to argue secretly fucks. And even for me, I'm like,

[01:25:49] this movie's a mess. I like it. I like it on balance. But it is so fucking all over the place. It's really hard to get your head around. Kyle, where are you on this movie? Yeah.

[01:26:02] Well, I liked revisiting it because kind of as we were saying earlier, so many people's campion introduction was the piano. And then you just sort of take things chronologically,

[01:26:15] or at least I did. And so when Holy Smoke came up, I think there was a lot that I was interested in. But also just you just don't expect that from her. I didn't then. But I think a few years later,

[01:26:27] I was dating a guy who really loved Sweetie and show that to me. And that was such a skeleton key. And so it was fun to go back and revisit this. Like knowing that she already had that vibe and

[01:26:40] those interests within her and that she likes things to be messy. I mean, I think, you know, I like messy movies if they're done with some thoughtfulness. And I think the movie likes being

[01:26:52] messy. Even the very end of the movie, where they're emailing each other about their lives, which are very settled, but also keeping a space for each other within those specific far flung lives is a messy conclusion that sticks with you because it is messy. That,

[01:27:12] you know, there is a certain yearning for one another. Who knows if they'll ever see each other again, though. And there's nothing open and shut about it. It leaves in an open place. But we really had something, didn't we? You know, there's that sense of just like,

[01:27:26] I mean, the reveal of fucking like Keitel with like the two sided baby Bjorn that he's now fathered twins with Pam Greer. And he's just fucking got glasses on. He's writing his second

[01:27:37] novel. Pam Greer, I want to give a whole little spotlight to in a second. But, you know, I first 40 minutes I was so locked in with this. And as it went on, I was just like, is this movie totally

[01:27:48] losing the plot? And then started to like coalesce for me again towards the end. And when you get to that moment of her moving to the back of the pickup truck to sort of like console him, I was

[01:28:01] like, fuck this movie just wholly win me over again that it totally put a bow on it. And I was like, ready for the movie. I was just assumed that was the last shot of the movie. And then when

[01:28:11] you put that email coda on there, I just felt once again, unmoored. I do think it is a more interesting way to end the movie. I do agree with you that the messiness is for the point. But I was

[01:28:22] like, once again, just even in the final two minutes completely thrown off from my expectations with this film. It's so interesting, because Campion is so specific with her visual intentions. And there's and with honestly, any intentions or creative intentions to but even watching something

[01:28:37] like Power of the Dog, which is very specific, formally and structurally my first time through that film. And I think a lot of people's first times through that film, you're kind of like,

[01:28:48] where's this going? What is this all amounting to? I'm so curious, you know, that she knows the true nature of the movie, but you're waiting, waiting, waiting for you to know the true nature

[01:28:59] of the movie and you find it out. And the second time through was so fascinating for me because every single scene is leading towards that ending. And there's no wasted scene. It's all setting up

[01:29:12] everything that is about that will eventually pay off. You just don't know that yet. So it is a very like tight, controlled screenplay in the way that it's written. But it has the illusion of mess

[01:29:26] because the first time through you don't know that, you know, all you know is she knows it. And that that can be a really alluring thing in a filmmaker where you know that they know but your own reaction to it or your own emotional takeaway is more complicated.

[01:29:44] But I think Kyle, you just identified a thing I like about the movies I usually defend that are sort of the ambitious messes from the filmmakers we cover where it's just like they're doing something that feels so unwieldy and inscrutable, but they're doing it with a confidence and

[01:30:02] precision. Whether or not it's pleasant, whether or not it goes down smoothly, I'm like they know exactly what they're doing. I can dislike it or not, but they have not lost control of this.

[01:30:14] And I am just such a sucker for that clarity of vision, especially when the vision is directed at something that's kind of abstract, you know, or messy, I guess. I personally think you need the coda because I like thinking of this movie not as their

[01:30:36] not as their like ultimate union, but it's like a year later, something they would both reflect on both fondly and sort of with bizarre like being like, wow, that is crazy that we did that. I totally agree with that.

[01:30:49] Right. The distance is good to include the distance. But it's probably I'm trying to think of us triple Fs, Kyle, like sitting down and seeing this at Venice and being like, holy shit, like Jane Campion's new movie with Kate Winslet. Holy smoke.

[01:31:08] And walking out and being like, well, I don't even know where to begin. Like, you know, not even maybe I don't know how I would have reacted in 1990, but like certainly I would not have been able to walk out and been like,

[01:31:17] I totally get what that right. Does this movie play like the paperboy? You know, right. Yes. I mean, sure. In some ways. Have you guys done Lee Daniels yet? No, it's we've talked about it a lot. Series. Come on. Talk about like confident messiness.

[01:31:34] I would see him to make another movie and then fucking Billie Holiday is kind of boring. Right. Right. Which was sort of underwhelming. Yeah. But here's the thing also that the title of the movie, Holy Smoke with an exclamation point,

[01:31:48] you know, she directs with an exclamation point. But the feeling you have as a viewer is a question mark. You know, it might even be an ellipsis. You might just be trailing off at

[01:31:58] the end of the exclamation. Yeah. But I also do love a movie that has an exclamation point in the title. You know, the informant had an exclamation point. Everybody wants him had two exclamation points. It's obviously inherited from the Van Halen song.

[01:32:12] I don't have we ever gotten three exclamation points in a title? Oh, fuck. I feel like there has to be. And now I'm thinking of what it is. It's Pat does have an exclamation point. Right. Am I wrong? Is there a question mark exclamation point that is?

[01:32:25] Oh, it's called that's called an interrobang, of course. And I'm not sure. Let's see. I'm looking at some of these safety last. That's an early one. Viva Zapata, of course. Marlon Brando nominated them the classic movie with ants. Oklahoma, of course, classically comes with an exclamation

[01:32:44] point. What else have we got? Faster, pussycat, kill, kill. That has three. But we're out there. We go to the same with Torah, Torah, Torah. I just saw everyone. Apology. The title of its Pat does not contain any punctuation. It's just

[01:33:00] that the poster is a giant question mark. A movie that has undoubtedly aged perfectly. There's the funny subcategory of like too long food. Thanks for everything. Exclamation point. Julie Newmark, like where you have the exclamation point in the middle of the title.

[01:33:17] Stop or my mom will shoot another one. But I'm not seeing any triple. Someone's got to try that. Yeah. Pam Grier sidebar. Pam Grier came on the movie for five minutes, maybe. It's a brief performance. Probably less.

[01:33:34] I think. Yeah. It's one scene. Basically, she sings a tune, though. She does sing a tune. This is my thing. Pam Grier obviously recently came up in our Carpenter series where she's into the late period Carpenter movies. Right. One right before one right after Jackie Brown.

[01:33:52] And we were sort of talking about why we didn't get to see the sort of post Jackie Brown dramatic career that we want. Big comeback, big lead roles. All right. And I feel like people push back on two things I said,

[01:34:05] one of which was that she was kind of depressed to be back in genre land, which is I think correct, because that is one of Pam Grier's skills is I don't think she ever condescended to material. She always heightened material. And I think she likes working and whatever.

[01:34:23] But you watch her show up in this and just her being in this context, you're like, fuck, I wish more directors were using her like this. I wish she had a bigger part in this.

[01:34:34] But I also wish she had more of a run of auteurs, just stretching how Pam Grier could be used in a film. She's great casting in this. Yes. Both in that she can come and kind of bitch out Harvey Keitel for a minute,

[01:34:51] and you totally buy that he would be intimidated and sort of want to keep her. And she's just sort of like similar kind of age and they're from similar times. They both came up

[01:35:07] in the 70s and all that. So that's great. But yeah, I just I kind of wanted a whole movie of her. You want to know everything about this one. Having twins. It's such a dangling thread. And it's not like she ever worked with Campion again,

[01:35:23] obviously. So that's too bad too. They're a good energy match. They're good pop culture. And it's funny. I mean, basically, all the quotes, like Winslet's quotes about this are basically like, I love this character. She's such a monster. She's great. She was even more over

[01:35:43] the top in the script and I tried to make her feel more human. But I had such a blast watching it. And then Campion is just like, you know, being in love is psychotic,

[01:35:54] like, even if it's brief. And so that's what's so exciting about this movie for her, I think. Her impression of Harvey Keitel's character is like he's incredibly straight laced, even though he's presenting himself as a cool cat, right? That's what the back half of the

[01:36:14] movie really is. And of course, it ends up with him in the dress with the lipstick on, chasing after Winslet like a madman, right? I'll read this line at least. There's a cultural thing about the seduction of girls in their 20s.

[01:36:29] I feel sad that men don't grow up with their own generation of women and learn to enjoy them and accept their aging. So I guess there is this element of a finger in the eye, like a punishment

[01:36:39] for his character, that he goes down that road, but she's having fun with it. Well, I mean, you made the fucking age gap joke at the beginning of the episode. But this is like

[01:36:53] a movie that is actually somewhat interrogating age gaps. And not like criticizing them, but it's like, what are the weird power dynamics of this? You know, both in terms of how it plays out, but also why that initial attraction exists in the first place.

[01:37:09] And again, who has the power within those structures? If older men are creating structures that reinforce their power and give them access to younger women, what power within those structures do younger women wield? And how cognizant of that power are they?

[01:37:23] Right. It's like once they have sex, he kind of transfers most of his power to her, despite the fact that it seems like he is the one who is exerting even more control in that situation. He shouldn't have come.

[01:37:39] He shouldn't have come. She told him that. She did warn him. He didn't listen. This movie got mixed to bad reviews. Really? In a year, of course, that's famous for all the fucking 90s auteurs, like fucking victory lapping. And also elder statesmen, people from previous decades as well.

[01:38:01] So that's probably not helping. The fact that this movie is coming out in awards season, in a very packed awards season. I don't know. David Rooney, your Film Critics Circle colleague, actually gave it a good review in Venice in Variety. He actually said,

[01:38:25] this is like sweetie, this is a very challenging work. It's kind of a return to her early idiosyncratic style. So there were some people clicking into that. But I think a lot of reviews, apart from bafflement by the pairing of the lead actors,

[01:38:41] were like, this movie's not really about cult deprogramming. It's actually just a battle of the sexes. I think the pitch maybe had gone over strangely as well. That's the entry point. It's about that opening monologue. It's about how weird human brains are.

[01:39:00] And the idea of cult deprogramming, the idea of someone being quote unquote brainwashed, and they need to hire someone else to quote unquote reset their brain is a vehicle to open those doors and start interrogating. As much as we think we understand how our neural pathways or

[01:39:23] whatever, it's just like fucking chaos. But on that note of how it was received, have you guys seen the poster for this movie? Yes. It's a great poster. It's like a tabloid cover. But at the bottom of the poster, you know, the sort of bottom line

[01:39:41] of the tabloid cover, it says, has writer director Jane Campion gone too far? And, you know, I mean, that kind of like controversy hyping is what Weinstein was very good at. But it is a good

[01:39:54] line to kind of think about how people responded to that film at that time. It literally says like a scandalous new film. It is very much trying to be like, this is the movie that's going to press all your buttons like you won't believe it. So yeah,

[01:40:07] it is funny because... Sex captive in desert hideaway young beauty seduced by macho American twice her age. We paid him thousands of stuns family experts question who really seduced who? Like that makes it sound like it's gonna be fucking wild things or something.

[01:40:19] Well, but it might as well just say like, naked Titanic beauty all over herself. Yeah, no, screw 60 year old man, you know, because it is... I have to read the P quote, but no, sorry, finish, finish. No, no, no, no, read the P.

[01:40:33] I just want to say before we move away from the poster, because the P quote is, I mean, look, this is what we've been building up to this entire episode. Right? I have a full bladder. So go ahead.

[01:40:41] It's also one of these posters where it's very striking, but you also look at it and you're what's the title of this movie? Because of the formatting and doing it... Is it called tabloid times? Right. Yeah. What is this? Holy smoke is like...

[01:40:52] It does say holy smoke twice. Right. They're using that as the fucking quippy daily news, New York Post, shocking headline. But the way it's formatted does not feel like that's the title of the movie anyway.

[01:41:06] Well, yeah, but also all other marketing of this film is like Kate Winslet standing in a desert, basically. It's more trying to make it seem like some sort of exotic movie about... It looks like hideous kinky. It's like the exact same marketing campaign.

[01:41:21] With her midriff bear. Right. Anyway, the P quote is just that the P scene was done, obviously, with a saline drip attached to her. But she was like, I want to do one myself.

[01:41:34] And so she tried to pee herself. And as she says, and the problem is, of course, that the wee dribbles down one leg. She said she could just could not arrange it. So the P was cinematic. She couldn't get the pee in properly. She couldn't.

[01:41:52] Yeah. She also apparently after seeing the movie for the first time with her husband, Jim, we were totally stunned for about 24 hours afterwards. It was almost like we had a

[01:42:01] terrible hangover that wouldn't go away. We were in sort of a daze. Oh my God, we've made a porn film. So she was quite shocked by how explicit the movie is. Even though it's not like explicit in

[01:42:11] some sort of like, kind of lurid, horny way, I would say. But it's a very intimate movie. Everything is raw. It's also the campaign thing we talk about. Like sexuality in campaign movies is far more vulnerable because it's unvarnished. You know? Right.

[01:42:29] It is interesting. I mean, we're talking about she is an actress who is able to overpower in her performance as a dodgy accent. But I do think it's important as an actor— I go to bat for the accent. I think it's good.

[01:42:43] I'm not saying this one. I'm saying in general. In that same David Rooney review that David has cited, it says that the accent is unimpeachable. I'm not criticizing this accent. I'm just talking about the accent thing we're saying in general.

[01:42:54] More so just winding up to this point that I think it is important for all actors to— like in your development as an actor, the moment when you can start to recognize what your

[01:43:03] weaknesses are, you know? And how to circumvent them and avoid them rather than thinking that you're an actor who can pull off fucking anything. And I think it was an important lesson that this

[01:43:12] early on in Kate Winslet's career, she recognized that she could not control her urine stream. Because you just see her never attempt that again for the rest of her filmography. That's good. She has embarrassed herself again. Anyway, I'm sorry. Let's play the box office game. Stupid joke.

[01:43:32] We could do the limited weekend, which is December 3rd, 1999. I guess we should do that. We can also do its wide weekend, but no, we don't need to do that. I think the wide weekend is my birthday weekend. Is that possible?

[01:43:43] It's February. Yes. Yeah, it's February. It took a while to go. I mean, wide. I mean, a hundred screens. It did not go wide, wide. This movie opened on two theaters in December, per screen average of $16,000 at number 61. Also opening this weekend,

[01:44:02] Sweet and Lowdown and The End of the Affair. There's a lot of Oscar movies coming out right now. There's that movie Virtual Sexuality. That rings a bell. What's that? What is that?

[01:44:12] Oh, fuck. It was like a British comedy about... It was sort of like a reverse Weird Science. It's like a woman makes a man in a computer program and then he comes to life or whatever. It's like,

[01:44:23] oh, you're the perfect man. Anyway, I'm just looking at new... But no, number one movie, Griffin in December 1999. Can you just tell me what it is? Toy Story 2. That's right. The Deuce, baby! In its third week. Still number one. I just figured you'd know. Huge. Humongous.

[01:44:40] Number two is, what was its box office rival? It's an action film. Its box office rival in 1999... They came out the same week. Right. Right. In November. Fuck. Is it like an established action star? Yeah. Established action franchise.

[01:45:00] Oh, it's established action franchise in 1999 that is released in the fall or the winter. Against Toy Story 2. Yeah. So like Thanksgiving weekend. Oh, oh, oh, oh. It's Bond. It's Tomorrow Never Dies? The World is Not Enough. Okay. Sorry. I get them confused.

[01:45:22] It's fair enough. It's the third Brosnan movie. The one with Denise Richards and Sophie Marceau. Yes. Uh, number three at the box office is a R-rated fantasy action horror movie with a big star. Sleepy Hollow. Who's on the wane. No. No? Star is on the wane. Okay.

[01:45:45] Star is on the wane. Because Sleepy Hollow I know comes out the same weekend as World is Not Enough, which is why we've covered both of those this weekend. Sleepy Hollow is number four. Okay. Star on the wane, weird horror action sci-fi. What were the genres you said?

[01:46:03] Sort of horror action, you know, supernatural fantasy. Is it End of Days? It's End of Days. Oh man. Yeah. Yeah. Schwarzenegger. Yeah. Which I've never seen. That's a Schwarzenegger I've never seen. I haven't either. Is that Peter Himes? It's Peter Himes. Yeah. I've seen it. And?

[01:46:22] Um, not great. Gabriel Byrne is the devil, right? The number one thing I remember is Gabriel Byrne seducing a mother and daughter and they have sex in this kind of like, bass relief kind of way. That's it's a weird visual scene. Weird threesome.

[01:46:43] Weird threesome to find in a Schwarzenegger movie. Mother, daughter, Gabriel Byrne. Kyle, I'm not saying I'm disappointed in you, but that is the kind of movie I would love to have someone tell me is secretly great.

[01:46:54] Oh, I don't doubt that you can find people who think that. I mean, like, listen, there's been this rash recently of people reevaluating movies or just happening upon them on TV from that era and being like, wow, this is gorgeous looking. And it was.

[01:47:08] And yeah, I don't doubt that compared to like most of the bi committee shit that we see in movies these days. It's just like stunningly gorgeous, but not a great movie as I recall.

[01:47:20] I'm going to rewatch it now. Number five is another one of those kinds of movies that we're talking about. It is a crime thriller. It's the kind of movie that would be a TV show that would last for two seasons now. And it was based on a book.

[01:47:35] An Oscar play. It was a programmer. Programmer based on a book, a huge star and a up and coming female star. It's not The Bone Collector. It is The Bone Collector. It is The Bone Collector.

[01:47:52] Talk about exactly what I'm saying, because it wasn't Barry Jenkins discovering Bone Collector on a plane recently and it looks so good and everybody was like, yeah, it's gorgeous. Yeah. And movies these days just aren't. That's Noice. It's a Philip Noice film.

[01:48:08] Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie. You've also got Queen Latifah, Michael Rooker, Luis Guzman, Ed O'Neill, Leland Dorser in a film about a serial killer. All those Leland Dorser's in this. That's another one where I'm like, I should I should rewatch that. That probably rules like. Yeah.

[01:48:28] Oh, it does rule. Trust me. You know, have you seen it, Ben? Or are you just saying that off the title? Absolutely. I've seen it. The villain lives in like a fucking underground lair full of pipes. It's like extremely my shit.

[01:48:42] Isn't the villain Leland Dorser? Let me spoil it a little bit. Oh, boy. I mean, Leland Dorser, again, a villain. I don't I just don't see it. I think you must be mistaken. It's just no way that would ever happen in a movie.

[01:48:56] I forgot there was a Bone Collector TV show. Oh, God, was there? Well, Lincoln Rhyne, Colin Hunt for The Bone Collector. Was it like Dennis Hayspert? It was Russell Hornsby. Oh, OK. Russell Hornsby. Who's the son in Fences. Yeah.

[01:49:11] Yeah. Yeah. You know, because the idea is that he is in a hospital bed, right? Like he's been paralyzed or something. Right. He's like doing everything from. Yeah. That is funny that he was that he was Denzel's son in Fences and then he played fucking the Bone Collector.

[01:49:25] I think Joven Adepo was the son in Fences, right? Like, wasn't he? Isn't he the older son? Am I wrong about this? He's the older son. That's right. Yes, in Fences. Right. That's right. He's a good actor. Yeah.

[01:49:37] Um, this is a weird box office, Griffin, in that it's the same top 10 as last week. There's nothing new. Really? Yeah, it's really weird. Like everything new is just limited release stuff. And that's it.

[01:49:53] It's Toy Story 2, World is not Enough, End of Days, Sleepy Hollow, Bone Collector, Pokemon, Dogma, Being John Malkovich, The Insider, Anywhere but Here. That's your 10. And those are the 10 last week. I yearn hearing that top 10 that has like... Being John Malkovich? Jesus.

[01:50:09] But look, there's shitty movies on that 10, but it's a buffet. You know what I'm saying? There are options. There are. And all these movies are doing well. I mean, the Being John Malkovich made $22 million in 1999. That's pretty crazy. Yeah, you know...

[01:50:27] It was what? It was USA Films? It was like the focus, you know, pre-focus? Yeah. You know, it's a depressing thing to think about. That like 20 years ago, the narrative was like, why can't Charlie Kaufman crack this $25 million domestic ceiling? Right. All these movies, peter out at 25.

[01:50:46] Now it's like fucking House of Gucci crawls to 50 and everyone's like giving it a standing, throwing roses at it, being like, good job, keeping grownups in theaters. That's great. House of Gucci would have made like $160 million 10 years ago. Oh, or even three.

[01:51:00] Yeah, we made Lincoln money. Yeah, or even a few. Yeah, absolutely. Right. Anyway... Anyway, everything's good. Everything's good. I'm trying to be less negative. 2022, everything's good. Everyone's a good person. Oh, I love this. Great. Is this the year of Good Griffin? Yeah. The movies are safe. Good Griff.

[01:51:18] I think the outlook is bright. I agree. That's right. It's the opposite of Good Grief. It's Good Griff. Yeah. Hashtag Good Griff and make some fan art of me as Charlie Brown, but I'm happy. Right. You've kicked the football.

[01:51:35] I get make... This is the fan art I want. I'm fucking kicking a field goal. Right. And everyone's going, yay! In a little Charlie Brown shirt. And they're like, we respect you. We recognize your worth. That's great. A good man, Griffey Noobs.

[01:51:51] Holy Smoke is great. And yeah, you know, after this movie, you know, get such a chill reception. She's like, all right, all right, I'll do something normal. I'll do In the Cut next. That one. Wait. Yeah. Why are you booing me? I'm right. Yeah, she is.

[01:52:09] Kyle, thank you so much for being on the show. Thanks for having me, blank check exclamation point. We should change our fucking name. Yeah. Blank check! Blank check! Kyle, you're a legend. Thanks for being a festival friend. Long overdue. Thank you, Simsie.

[01:52:28] And yeah, and everyone should fucking read your book because I mean, it couldn't be more relevant to our listeners. Yeah, listen, I'm biased, but it's really fun, juicy. It moves. And if you want to know

[01:52:41] how hard it is to make a movie, let alone a movie masterpiece, this is... This'll tell you. Breaking it down. Yeah, I have seen several people tweeting that they read it in one sitting.

[01:52:54] Yeah, yeah, I'm excited about that. Truly. I do think and that the response I keep getting, which is absolutely what I was going for, is that you read this movie thinking, oh, well, there's no way they'll make this or you read this book thinking,

[01:53:07] there's no way they'll make this movie. Just the odds are two steps against them, even though you know, you're probably reading the book because you've seen the movie a billion times. But also, as we said, if they make this, it will be a disaster.

[01:53:18] When you get to the shit of like, the movie is cancelled because it rained too much for the first time in decades and now the land is too green. You're like either sign from God,

[01:53:29] don't make this or get over yourself, find another way to make it. And the idea that he was like, no, I'm going to wait two more years. You're just like doomed, doomed, doomed.

[01:53:39] Get over yourself, dude, or give up. And then you're like, no, I was wrong. He made a masterpiece. He made the best blockbuster last 25 years. And as he was about to make it, he started having heart problems and had to go in the hospital for

[01:53:50] heart stents. Like truly a million signals that any other filmmaker would have just thought, OK, well, I'll pack it and there must be something else I can do. And he never did. I'll just make my fucking penguin movies.

[01:54:04] It's also just like it being the blank check off of Happy Feet 2. Yeah. And their hope that he'd make three, you know, it's like, just fucking satiate him. No, yeah, very much so. I mean, yeah, you'll see in the movie,

[01:54:17] they would not have made Fury Road if the first Happy Feet hadn't done so well. It became a real blank check situation. Although arguably the second Happy Feet was not as successful because he had his attention split. But Happy Feet 2 is secretly a masterpiece.

[01:54:35] Secretly a fun movie. Yes. I've watched it several times. I wonder if he'll make... Really? Yeah, I bought the fucking 3D Blu-ray and I watch it a lot. I think that movie is really fucking good. And I never rewatched the first Happy Feet.

[01:54:51] Is this new one, is it getting made? The Furiosa movie? Yeah, I mean, that's the intention. That's definitely happening, right? I keep talking to them and they're still doing it. But yeah, I mean, if you read the book,

[01:55:03] you'll understand that delays like this are par for the course on Mad Max movies or really most George Miller movies anyway. There's so much buy in that needs to be happening, like literally buy in in some cases, because they're not cheap. But yeah, I mean, it's all,

[01:55:19] you know, the intention is to go and they have, you know, a huge new star Anya Taylor-Joy. They have Chris Hemsworth as the villain, who I heard was called Dr. Dementus. Love that name. So George Miller-y. That sounds amazing. And Tom Burke replaced Yahya Abdul-Mateen the second, right?

[01:55:39] Yeah, because you know, those two are going up for the same roles. Exactly the same vibe. But maybe did Yahya Abdul-Mateen just go like, you know what, I'm actually in too many movies. I actually need to take a break. I don't know.

[01:55:53] But yeah, I mean, I'm excited for Furiosa for the obvious reasons. But also, you know, this is a screenplay that they've had written for God, well over a decade, they were writing it. Because at one point he was going to shoot these back to back, right?

[01:56:08] At one point, it was going to be shot back to back. At one point, Furiosa was going to be animated, and they went pretty far down that path. But then it honestly went too far while Fury Road

[01:56:20] kept getting pushed back. So the timing just did not work out. At one point, there was going to be animated Furiosa, there was going to be real live Fury Road, there was going to be like,

[01:56:29] road shows, theme park situations, they pitched a whole transmedia situation. And of course, at that time, they barely got Fury Road made. But now Warner Brothers is like, Oh, actually, we will do all the other things.

[01:56:43] I would love to see like fucking monster truck rally style arena Mad Max shows. They tried that with Fast and Furious and they pulled the plug on it like really fast. But Mad Max, it would translate much better. Kyle, final question. Okay.

[01:57:00] And you can protect your sources here. I'm not asking you to give us a scoop. I'm just asking if you hold the knowledge. Okay. Do you have a sense of what the fuck 1000 years of longing is? Oh, sorry, 3000 years. Three, three, 3000 years. Sorry.

[01:57:18] Yes, I believe the concept is that Idris Elba is a genie. And Tilda Swinton is this very shut down repressed woman. And he tells her stories and so it kind of touches on all sorts of locations and times and

[01:57:39] But it sounds like it's Arabian Nights like in structure. I think it's something like that. It almost exclusively takes place in one room, right? In a hotel room. Well, I think they are. I think they are in it. Okay. But the stories.

[01:57:53] No, it definitely reaches outside of that hotel room. Yeah. And that there might be interesting cameos in it from some of Miller's other work. Mumbles? I don't know. Lorenzo's oil? It's back? Cannot confirm that. The oil. But we'll see. They just hold up a tincture of the oil.

[01:58:16] Yeah, they just holding up the oil going like, oh, my oil. I'm Italian. Don't you forget? They start vaping Lorenzo's oil. Yeah, right. 21st century. All right. Okay, we're done. Hey, thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review

[01:58:33] and subscribe. Thank you to Marie Barty for our social media and many things. That's now a reductive way to refer to her at the end of these episodes. Increasingly Marie Barty helping us make the show. Pat Reynolds and Joe Bowen for our artwork. Lane Montgomery in the Great

[01:58:48] American Novel for our theme song. You can hear their new album extremely loud and incredibly online wherever you can hear albums. Thank you to Alex Baron, AJ McKeon for our editing. Go to blankies.reddit.com for some real nerdy shit. We got a website coming very soon. It

[01:59:07] should be launching around now where a lot of these links that I spend too much time saying at the end of each episode will be centralized. So you're going to be able to go there for merch,

[01:59:16] for Reddit, for Discord, for all these sorts of things. They'll all be sort of organized in one place along with that is where March Madness voting will be happening very soon. But of course,

[01:59:31] remember, you got to go to patreon.com slash blank check for blank check special features where we are still busting ghosts. Ghosts that are becoming increasingly more and more controversial. And tune in next week for In the Cut, as we said, a very normal movie that everyone

[01:59:49] took in stride. Right. And as always, she's one of the finest actors of her generation. But Kate Winslet does not know how to make her urine act.