Life of Pi with Ray Tintori

[00:00:00] Blank Check with Griffin and David, Blank Check with Griffin and David, Don't know what to say or to expect All you need to know is that the name of the show is Blank Check Podcast don't think like we do People forget I gotta start over

[00:00:27] Podcast don't think like we do People who forget Like that Jesus Christ What the fuck? Podcast don't think like we do People who forget that get themselves killed When you look into a podcast's eyes You are seeing your own emotions reflected back at you and nothing else

[00:00:45] It's true It's true right? It's a good line I didn't go for the most iconic line, I looked for the truest line The true friends We are of course hashtag the true friends And this is Blank Check

[00:00:58] This is a podcast about filmographies, directors that have massive success early on in their career And given a series of Blank Tracks to make whatever casey, crazy passion projects I can't speak to it, I didn't sleep very well You're a disaster I'm a disaster

[00:01:12] Why didn't you sleep well? I mean do What a time waste of a question The old Bakaroo? Bak's not doing great I don't know if her guest knows this I have a serious back injury How'd you get that? I did work Doing stunts? Dialogue Dialogue

[00:01:29] Yeah, you know the way that serious actors injure themselves on a stunt based TV show Is it a good shot? Uh, Marshall You think it'll make the show? It's certainly not like the moment in Can we talk about fallout right now? Can we start right now?

[00:01:47] Yeah, because for film nerds like us You see fallout and you turn to whoever you're seeing it with And you go that's the shot where he broke his ankle And they're like really exciting to people And they're like seriously

[00:01:55] And you're like yeah he's running on the broken ankle I had no idea that that shot was going to start a minute and a half before the injury That he was just going to book across that roof And then when I realized that that's what I was seeing

[00:02:06] Was like a rubber band just being pulled and pulled and pulled Yeah And it was going to end with like Tom Cruise actually injuring himself on screen Yeah It doesn't end, that's the middle of the chase It's what's crazy But I'm saying that shot Oh yes, yes, yes

[00:02:18] It is insane There is a moment I cannot get over in that movie Which is when like as part of the like comedic dynamic of Benji giving him all the like dumb glib notes Where he goes Can you go any faster?

[00:02:31] And Tom Cruise looks like he's running as fast as any human can And then he like throttles up to the next gear I cannot get past that moment That's great I've also now, when I need to get hyped up about stuff

[00:02:42] I listen to the track, the score track on the soundtrack when he's running Which one is that? Because I listen to the score a lot I think it's called like Windows and Rooftops or something like that Yeah, there's the best track

[00:02:53] Now I'm going to look up with my favorite track I've seen it four times, I saw it twice last weekend That's a good weekend I want to tell you There is a really cool thing music-wise in that movie Which is that moment where he crashes the motorcycle

[00:03:04] And then pulls out a knife And you're just like, what are you doing motherfucker? You got nothing And then he slips into the hole And then you're underground and it's cold and dark and safe They start playing a cue that is actually just a lift from the old

[00:03:16] 60s TV show Copy it and paste it right onto the movie It doesn't sound like anything else in the movie And it's this weird dog whistle that just like I wept with joy for like four minutes after seeing that movie For the first time, I just love it

[00:03:29] I do think it's the best score out of the six movies No, no, I just... I think this one's incredibly good Great score Your favorite Ghost Protocol Those strings though Yeah I think this is the best score But it's like never going to get enough credit

[00:03:43] Because it's so much repurposing of the pre-existing things It's pretty distant from the last two scores I also love the Rogue Nation score I think the Rogue Nation score is fabulous It's a series with good scores and I like that they switch it up

[00:03:56] Yeah, I do too, I do too The series five score is very orchestral Yes And there's number six is much more series five I just said Fallout is much more like electronic and music and weird It's very like haunted Fallout though Fallout is a celebration of life

[00:04:16] It's a celebration of dance All your good intentions Yes I won't let you down Blood I won't let you down You choose Je suis de sale I won't let you down You choose to accept it So this podcast about Fallout Directors who have massive success in their career

[00:04:32] And sometimes those checks Get me through playing chess Jesus Christ Sometimes those checks clear Ben And sometimes they fall out baby It's a main series on films of Ang Lee We've gotten to his second Academy Award For Best Director It's called Life of Pi Yes

[00:04:54] That is the movie we're talking about today Yes His highest grossing film Worldwide I think so Shit I watched Pi Ben Damn it Didn't you do some other bit like this recently What did you text? I was like, here, remember We told him to watch Taking Woodstock

[00:05:12] And instead he watched Woodstock 99 on YouTube No, but no, there was something with Billy Lin as well What was the Billy Lin thing? I can't remember I'm just going through a rough patch in life We told him to watch Billy Lin's long half-time walk

[00:05:24] And he thought we were telling him to take a long walk That I did He did That he did Ben's going through a transient stage Is that fair to say? I'm going through an air mattress Sure At various friends' apartment stage

[00:05:42] I think it's important that we document all of our personal lives on this podcast So that if we ever listen back, we'll be like Oh, that's what was happening to me Can we say what day it is? Because you guys never do that

[00:05:54] No, we're not going to do that We want people to triangulate it To guess it based on context You say a date, I'm going to bleep it By the way, Alec Baldwin just dropped out of the Joker movie Life of Pi is his third highest grossing

[00:06:08] domestic and his highest grossing So the crash and tiger and Hulk beat it worldwide Or domestic, I mean? And worldwide this was a I think his second highest grossing worldwide is Hulk Which made 245 And this made 609 worldwide That's such a weird thing

[00:06:26] This was a huge hit in India in China Yes It was like his biggest movie in Asia, I think For sure, it has to be Far and away To join us on today's episode We have a very special guest He's a dear friend of mine

[00:06:39] He's a remarkably talented filmmaker Emmy Award winner? Absolutely He's an Emmy Award winner I wish I could say absolutely to the question To that kind of thing David, Pulitzer Prize winner? Give it a second Yeah, give me a minute Ben, fuckmaster? Hell yeah

[00:06:58] His work can be seen on the new Netflix series Maniac Which will now be out by the time this episode comes out I'm not sure, it might be a week before Maniac I might be legitimately a part of the roll out Of Maniac We'll be in the space

[00:07:11] That's exciting though, I didn't realize That's great Is that going to be good? I'm excited for that Or I'm very intrigued by that I can't put into words how good it is I'm so freaked out and honored To be a part of the craftspeople that made that show

[00:07:27] I have a small four minute section of it That I was responsible for And it was like Felt like going back to film school I cannot speak highly enough of what those people are doing Carrie, Fukanaga, right? Is involved He's sort of back

[00:07:40] I feel like he's been chilling for a second There's a very good GQ article about him And sort of him feeling like I missed four years Prime of my directing life Getting caught up in the development cycle Me too

[00:07:54] You don't feel like a lot of his ideas ended up in that movie I think a lot of them did I think that's the stuff I like more in the movie And I have no problem with Andy Machete I think that movie is fun

[00:08:01] I think that movie is solid The stuff that really pops for me is the stuff that feels like it very much came out of his development I like the part where he dances He took the alienist and it All the way to the end

[00:08:12] And then decided not to do it Those are two projects that I think are out there And they're all populated by him It's producer on both of them That's the thing There are certain sections in it Where I just wish he was literally the person choosing the coverage

[00:08:32] You know? Because developmentally I see him Life of Pi Life of Pi It's my fault Ray, you have worked on several Ang Lee films Worked on one Yes You have been on set for several Visited two sets And then I was an actor in taking what stock

[00:08:57] And I was also a camera operator in taking what stock You play one of the filmmakers So you're both on camera filming And then some of your footage ends up in the movie When he does the crazy sort of wood stock multi-camera thing Absolutely Yes

[00:09:11] What were the two Vestetsi visited though? I had a pivotal life experience Life experience visiting the ice storm set Cool As a seventh grader That was your braumence though, right? It honestly fucking was It really fucking was It was a day that my life changed

[00:09:28] Ray Tintori, I didn't know if I saw your braumence Hi guys Yeah, Ray Tintori's here Right So ice storm was like a life changer for you Yeah, which I would love to give you guys some of the details of

[00:09:37] Because I think it's like the context of what was going on around that It was just unbelievable And then I spent three days on the Billy Lynn set Right In Atlanta And specifically the three days that was really

[00:09:50] They were shooting out that whole confrontation scene with Steve Martin at the very end Yeah Basically it was there very much flying the wall But just seeing Steve Martin Worked so hard, you know, for three days And really that was fast That was so fascinating

[00:10:02] Just to like to see those weird cameras Oh absolutely Yeah And to see people sweat I love seeing geniuses When they don't know exactly what did You know, it's like he I didn't, I would not say like He was perfectly in control

[00:10:19] But I feel like he's been labeled a genius like 25 years ago now Yes And so it's just like him actually showing up and being like I'm gonna earn this today Was just like amazing to see Here's a question for you Like watching

[00:10:33] Angley work with someone like Steve Martin, right Who is like Such a veteran at this point And Angley has this reputation For being like a man of few words In terms of how he directs his actors, you know How much does he have to like

[00:10:49] Get hands on with a guy like Steve Martin About how weird and different this process is In terms of modulating his performance Because of the technology, you know I mean I tell you when I say fly on the wall I mean I was on the wall

[00:11:02] They're in the center of the room I'm not like You weren't budding your head I'm at the monitor, you know With like cool 3D glasses on Watching a feed of like Like not high frame rate But really watching in 3D I am not bothering anyone

[00:11:15] I don't think anyone knows him there And I certainly I think good directors As you know do not say things so loud Like when you're on the crew Understands the back and forth of how it That's a very good point You know That's a big difference between

[00:11:26] For me like A good director and a bad director Sloppy director Yeah Well there's just a thing if a director is like I'm gonna save time by just peaking my head And yelling something Right They think they're saving time But they're actually killing like Energy and goodwill Right

[00:11:39] Yeah And then it's sort of like Your mom showing up in the play date And being like Why haven't you done your laundry You know it like feels like that Pick up your room Yeah It's like a hurricane hitting here Mom I'm playing Lego You know

[00:11:51] And now you're like out of the Lego space I'm playing my Lego game Where the wizard is the captain of this spaceship What's that? I had a like long running in my head Lego like saga Oh that was your narrative Centered on a spaceship I built

[00:12:06] But then I had like a wizard guy And at some point I put the wizard guy In the spaceship and I was like I guess he's like the captain Game changer Yeah And then I was like So he does magic But they're in space

[00:12:16] And then they're like right It all sort of evolved around that Was that sort of like an ongoing narrative then? Yeah You established your play pattern That was your Sure I made myself like a space station That had a windmill inside of it

[00:12:28] So there was a bedroom with the gears In the center of the bedroom But then it also had like a crane On the outside so it could like Have a loading dock That was the bed That was super cool That was a long narrative

[00:12:38] My big thing was a Was a buddy cop dynamic Between a cop and a T-Rex Which I realized It was just Theodore Rex Right Which I had tried watching And given up on It was like this bad As like a six year old And then I was like

[00:12:53] But I think I can make this work Yeah maybe you did Up in the old bing bong You know Oh boy So Life of Pi Is A movie with a very Interesting development history Cause we are Oh yeah let's talk about it actually Ray

[00:13:09] And then Ray will get into You know the film itself But like Ray has set up like a small office In the corner Yeah The Audibom recording studio He's got Provisions Seltzer Different colored markers Two seltzers Are you a two seltzer guy? A Gatorade Two coffees

[00:13:28] A fruit bowl A phone charger Hey he's got an Rx bar I don't know if you notice that Hey great product Great company That can't remember Very much I could not get the peanut butter chocolate Which is my That's your favorite

[00:13:39] Have you tried the peanut butter in jelly? No Harder to find Very good Worthy effort I'll say worthy effort But You've been doing like Thro research You've been sending me over the last week All these different things You've been like Digging up, compiling, editing, condensing

[00:13:54] And then I did not forward any of it To David and Ben Because I'm a mess of a human being You certainly are This research was done No context Out of crisis I would say more than Out of a desire to be over prepared

[00:14:06] There's a lot of stuff I know about the The making of this film That I just wasn't Basically my boundary that I set was I can't come here and like spill the beans on I'm not the Julian Assange of like life of high You know

[00:14:19] You're not aiming to be Blancheki Leeds You're not gonna blow the lid on this one Right Your mother was a script supervisor For Anglion like a number of his films She's a script supervisor in three films And the still photographer in one film Okay

[00:14:33] So it was Ice Storm, this Woodstock Woodstock and then Billy Lomasmo Where she was still photographer So he's like a family friend of yours And you did like a very Thorough cross referencing to make sure that Nothing you were saying hasn't already been Shared publicly by Exactly

[00:14:51] And then the other thing if I can bear to you is You did get like explicit permission from Angly to be on the podcast To make sure he did not Feel like you were betraying trust Yeah, I think anything less would have been unacceptable Yeah

[00:15:04] I'm realizing I probably should have done the same With my father before I started talking about His financial problems four years ago Interesting That might have been a smart thing to do How's he doing these days? Okay Steady Steady I saw your dad at

[00:15:18] I feel like the last time I saw your dad was at Brewster McLeod Yeah That was fun Yeah, he should have played Ray is, I've referenced this Ray is the person who And I've told him this is not anything he needs To feel guilt or shame about

[00:15:31] But at the premiere of the tick Ray referenced how much he liked the bit Of me talking about my father's financial problems Absolutely not true You invoked it in front of No, no, no What you said, no I just remember what it was

[00:15:43] My brother and my father were there And you said I feel like I know you guys better Because of the way Griffin talks about you on the show And that made my father very paranoid To figure out what I had said about him Right?

[00:15:54] I think that's what you said I told Jamesy Who by the way did not appreciate He called Jamesy And who you'd never met before And he doesn't go by Jamesy now And whenever I invoke him In childhood stories I call him Jamesy

[00:16:04] Because that was his name until he was like 10 The one story I referenced was Some story about you having to have your toys Cut back because Jamesy Which I thought was just hilarious And he told me that was not what happened It's 100% what happened James got the Nintendo 64

[00:16:20] When the Berlin Wall came down Against video game systems in our home I was the person who had to Sort of fight and scratch to get the fucking things There was a video game Berlin Wall And Jamesy said Oh, it's no big deal Jamesy went Peter Newman

[00:16:34] And he was like, I'm a gambling guy And looked me really hard in the eye And I went And just didn't take the bite I don't take a gambling with your dad Here's the thing I want to clarify this on the record Okay Which my father will love

[00:16:48] Here are the names on the record My father had a gambling problem And he had a gambling problem And he had a gambling problem And he had a gambling problem And he had a gambling problem And he had a gambling problem And I'm not sure what the record

[00:17:04] My father had a gambling problem previously The root of this problem was sports betting Right, that's the thing That's less fun to me He wasn't like a casino guy I think he's gone to casinos casually Never has a control problem But he would call his bookie every week

[00:17:18] And be like, no, I figured it out And this week we're betting the spread on this And that was his whole fucking thing And when I see photos or videos Of my parents before I was born A lot of their friends

[00:17:30] And I was like, look at this guy Why did I never know this guy? And it was like these are the guys That were conditionally Oh, he was the last seen on the Verrazano bridge In 1982 And then he mysteriously disappeared

[00:17:42] But it's like needles from back to the future too And I'm like, who's this guy? My mom's like, that was the guy where Your father had to stop seeing him In order for us to get married Did you guys not like the needles line in solo

[00:17:54] These are the guys I forgot to reference it What's the needle's line? I'm not doing this I don't remember this line at all A reference to the greatest character in the history of cinema What are you, McFly a chicken? So my father had a gambling problem

[00:18:10] Was like her tale before I was born When my parents got married And then independently My father had financial problems Because I've referenced both things I think a lot of blankies have extrapolated And it's even the Wikipedia that my father Had a gambling like remission four years ago

[00:18:28] Interesting Which is not the fact But that's sort of the narrative that's been crafted Between the two things I understand I honestly think I know what happened Which was before I even met you I had been listening to podcasts a little bit

[00:18:39] And the first thing that I told my father Was Griffin really talks about Pete's gambling a lot on the show And then I think my dad told him And I think that he had Oh, that's very possible Does your dad listen to our show? No, I just

[00:18:50] Does my mom listen to our show? Definitely Definitely yes He only listens to the Ben's choices though Here's my concern The one thing I did ask for explicit permission And I think I wrote him a I showed you the letter A very long nice A letter like a

[00:19:04] Letter letter like on paper? Any letter It was a long enough email I think to qualify Fair enough Just check But I explained Like my understanding of the show But I think the one thing I did not say Is that you are a silly Billy

[00:19:19] I am a silly Billy And I feel like the way you wrote the email Made me sound a lot more legitimate Because the way you describe David is accurate And the way you describe me made me sound like an adult Yeah, but I think I was honest about

[00:19:31] What I think is the actual quality of the analysis Going on here But I am like the chew that I'm waiting to drop Is like an email from Heng Lee That's just like subject to everything Who's this little stinker? Fart detective question mark

[00:19:42] You know, like what the fuck Who's this little stinker? Yeah I'm the general Talbot I just like thinking that Heng Lee had to think about our existence For one second I love it He didn't probably have to think about us for very long He said he was delighted

[00:19:59] Well, he's a very thoughtful man I think the second he found out about the podcast I'm not saying he listened to it But I think he sat in a room in silence And really contemplated the notion of our podcast For six to eight hours Right

[00:20:09] And I love that notion And I wish he had known Going into that deep thought That I'm a little stinker But by God By God So things we've now clarified Alright, we've done clarified My father's finances were not tied to gambling Heng Lee has spent eight hours

[00:20:22] Thinking about us Fair, fair I'm going to go to a summer camp in New Melford, Connecticut It was for very special little boys and girls Very special Alright, so Yann Martel Yes Wrote a novel Uh-huh And it came out in 2001 I think yes, 2001 Big hit Literary sensation

[00:20:38] It was a hit It won the Man Booker Prize Which is a big British literary award David Sims read it by the pool In 2002 Hummelberg On a summer vacation And so that's I feel like really crucial to the narrative The most important piece of context

[00:20:54] Because that's the moment when President of 20th Century Fox Film Production Tom Rothman gets the email Okay, Sims has picked it up We officially have gone Cultural moment Fox 2000 Executive Elizabeth Gabler Is hot on that book She's the one who really

[00:21:10] When she hears that I was reading it By the pool in Bordeaux She gets the ping Her beeper goes off And so she hires someone To write a screenplay And they bring a board Who? M. Night Shyamalan Let's get him on the boat Very cool

[00:21:23] A very logical choice He's the most famous Indian American director alive His films are very much about Like religious crisis Absolutely Especially up until this point He loves to wrestle with Like Catholicism And he's never really made Since his debut film Like his debut film Praying With Anger

[00:21:40] He never made a movie that like Really addressed identity in any particular way So maybe this is going to be a way For him to like, you know Kind of return to that initial Feeling that he explored What a twist But that's the interesting thing

[00:21:52] I mean this is very much of a piece With the things he was exploring In Praying With Anger And wide awake But he has unquestionably become A much stronger filmmaker at this point So the notion of him going back to Religious material Crisis of faith stuff

[00:22:05] With his current toolkit And it's also just exciting At that point in time to go like Oh shit, Night Shyamalan's going to make Something that is in no way a thriller Is kind of exciting Right He says his big hesitation That eventually caused him to leave the project

[00:22:19] Was that He wrote his own screenplay for the film He was like on board In it, it was going to be his direct follow up To the village It was set up And he dropped out because he said

[00:22:29] I got freaked out about the fact that it was kind of a twist movie That it has a twist at the end And I thought My name being attached to the movie with that twist At the end was going to bring too much baggage into the theater

[00:22:38] People would expect They'd be looking for He was very alarmed by the twist thing And I get it actually I kind of do Yeah But so he instead makes Lady in the Water Which is a triumph He makes another water movie

[00:22:48] It's a fascinating sort of sliding doors thing Where you just wonder If he had gone straight from The village to this He may have, like, you know He might not have done a good job though And also it would have been a tougher movie to make

[00:23:01] Even in 2004 or 5 Yes You know, visual effects wise And everything like I don't know how you do that shit Like maybe it would be a bad movie But even just in alternate reality Where he's got his deal with Disney

[00:23:11] He moves over to Fox to make Life of Pi He makes his Tony film Then he just goes back to Disney And he still has that home Where's Lady in the Water Like torpedoes Like all of his major professional relationships Yeah

[00:23:22] So he drops out and they replace him with You're right, you're right It's real sliding doors Alfonso Cuaron Yes And he decides to make They really like contracted with the three Like sort of visually exciting Perhaps like non-American directors I mean, I'm not a child that's American

[00:23:39] But Alfonso Cuaron And then he drops out to make Children of Men and Jean Pierre Genet Coming off of, I guess, a very long engagement Yeah He's the next, yeah, because that's 2004 He's the next one who signs on Yes Writes a screenplay again

[00:23:55] There's all these screenplays floating around by auteurs And because every person who came onto the project Really tried to make it their own It wasn't like they were working off Of the basic adaptation that had been commissioned No, and because that's the thing

[00:24:07] This film is credited to David McGee And no one else Like none of the other scripts I guess were really involved And this is a book that people had said was kind of unfilmable Well, it's a book that's mostly set on a boat Right With one character Yeah

[00:24:21] And animals Yes And mostly just one animal And that's it Like, so yes, that's an inherently challenging It's got a weird narrative structure Weird narrative structure It also has all this stuff about religion That is hard to convey I guess like you might worry

[00:24:38] Add to a mainstream audience And it's very... You know, it has this dumb framing device That can suck in movies I like the framing device a lot in this movie It's like Citizen Kane Exactly That movie is a fucking stinker What's the problem? Yeah

[00:24:55] Just like the thing where it's like Oh, well let me tell you my story And then you cut back to him And he's like And so then the boat went over there And you're like, you know, like, oh god And there's also just the fact that

[00:25:07] Like this movie spoiler hinges on the notion of Is the story you just saw true Or is it sort of a metaphor for what happened Sure A non-literal retelling of the struggle of the internal drain The twist Spoiler for Life of Pi

[00:25:21] I think that plays differently when you're reading it What's the sled's name? Uh, Pi Richard Parker It's Fight Club Yeah, it's Fight Club The end of Life of Pi Is that the sled is Fight Club Right, and then Irfan Khan is like You can't talk about this

[00:25:38] The guy's like, so alright, my novel now Right, and then they turn over the sled And they see Kaiser Soze written on the back And then at the end it turns out to be a sequel too Unbreakable My absolute favorite part No, not that

[00:25:53] But one of my top five The breath that David takes before he says unbreakable On the Split episode Has just so much contained joy in it That's wonderful It's real I'm just rewound and rewound It's just like, yeah

[00:26:04] People like it when David gets into the dirt with me Oh yeah, good episodes are often like David Goofy You know what I mean? Like a dog When people say the dog is off the leash Right, exactly That's the term they use

[00:26:17] Hey Ben, well this week we're talking about an Oscar winning movie Life of Pi That's true And we are being sponsored by one of our closest sister podcast friends Is that how to describe a sister podcast friend? I think so, yeah Okay, it's called Little Golden Men

[00:26:33] It's a podcast you might have heard of it It's from Vanity Fair And it's hosted by I think I know who Multiple friends of the podcast I know these guys Katie Rich Sure She's been on a few episodes Titanic, Sixth Sense Yeah Broadcast Nu I met her baby

[00:26:50] She's a great baby He's a toddler now Oh, he's not even a baby anymore Time is fleeting A flat circle Correct You got Joanna Robinson On her Minority Report episode You got Richard Lawson I like Richard I mean, on so many blank check episodes

[00:27:06] I mean, I like all the hosts You got Mike Hogan, who's a very important person But we'll get him on blank check, why not? Sure And it's on Vanity Fair He's got Oscar on the show Oscar himself, Oscar Oscar Just a statue Why not? Sure, great

[00:27:24] Yeah, let's bring them on The Little Gold Man himself Because this is a podcast where they talk about The Academy Awards, the Emmys Like award season They talk about movies and pop culture You know, with an eye on the award ceremonies coming

[00:27:40] But like, you know, they go in all kinds of different directions Especially because it's a year-long podcast They do great interviews And you know, for... Look, I'm not going to pigeonhole Blanky listeners But you're a bunch of nerds

[00:27:53] You probably care about this stuff as much as I do And if you're interested in like the movie business And award season And everything that's coming out this fall It's kind of essential to listen to it And Katie and Richard and Joanna and Mike

[00:28:06] They're, you know, they're so smart And they know what they're talking about So check out Little Gold Men Yep On Apple Podcast Yep Stitcher Wherever you listen to your shows Google Play What else you got? Uh... I don't know There's others Sure

[00:28:25] This is sort of a bad note to end on, isn't it? Bye Little Gold Men 2009 Yes Ang Lee comes aboard And says, I'm... You know, this movie's going to cost $120 million Yeah Fox is freaked out They're not sure And then, I guess, they eventually are like

[00:28:45] Well, alright, like, let's do it They dragged their heels on it for a little bit Because they were like They were... No, they were courting him very hard He agrees to do it He starts developing it And then he goes It's going to be expensive

[00:28:58] Okay, cool, I figured out how to do it This is what I need I became an all or nothing proposition of If I'm going to make this movie, it has to be this I mean, do you want to weigh in on this, Ray?

[00:29:07] Yeah, I'm going to try not to interrupt you like that No, no, please interrupt us Interrupt us, please I think this is a really interesting dynamic As I've read about it Because it seems very different than what you usually get Which is the director who's like

[00:29:17] What I'm going to make is going to be so good That it's going to make money And I don't really care to figure out how that happens Sure And then the studio's like Convince us, convince us I think Ang Lee thought that this

[00:29:27] They thought that this was a hit Right Way before he did Right And he thought that they weren't serious He thought it was esoteric And I don't understand how you can Put this sort of studio pressure on a movie That is There's a quote I read

[00:29:39] In some of the material you sent to me Was he met with Tom Rothman And he said What kind of movie do you think this is? Yeah And Tom Rothman said I think it's a family movie And he said What the fuck are you talking about family movie?

[00:29:50] His family dies Right In the bottom of the ocean He said What happened when you read the book And he said I finished it and I gave it to my wife And he said them one He said the rest of my family read it Sure And he went

[00:30:01] That's the point Everyone I know who's read this book Has shared it with their whole family That's how I read it Everyone in the family gets something else out of it It also went around my family I'm sure either my dad or mom bought it

[00:30:08] Because I won the Booker Prize They read it And then they were like You know Magical realism Check it out That was like Tom Rothman's whole cell Was this movie has some weird reflection pool Kind of thing Where people see themselves in it Regardless of age

[00:30:20] Regardless of background And it works as sort of this Like Borschek test Overuse I have not read the book I've written I do think the triumph of the book Is the first part Like the part with the family The part where he explains his relationship With the religions

[00:30:31] All that stuff Like that is when you're just like I love this man so much And I love his family You know Like you're just so And then all the rest of the shit You're so hooked But it's because you're so Like you're so into pie Yeah

[00:30:42] But yeah I'm not sure I don't know I'm not sure I think it's like Like you're so into pie Yeah But yeah I mean I'm sorry I feel like I cut you off In the cutoff races Oh my god 2018 Stop It's okay Everyone talk But yes

[00:31:01] This notion that they were Cording him very aggressively That they were Like this is a major Commercial film And that He then started Considering it And came back to them And went Okay I agree with you But the only way to make it Is 2019 2010

[00:31:16] But it's sort of like Brewing This is like in the lead up to Avatar when people are like I don't know if that thing Is just fucking Me seeing Beowulf Five times Right I remember Seeing Beowulf with my friends And going So think about what we just saw

[00:31:29] And James Cameron is now Making an alien war movie And we were just like Whoa But that was sort of That was like the hanging promise Of like either he's gonna Elevate it or the thing Just dies of James Cameron And He got really into I mean

[00:31:43] A thing I Always think about with regards to this movie is Film set on water are kind of Perfectly made for 3D Absolutely Because of the water Working as a surface Everything above it It makes this shadow box effect Where it's like the water Into a vanishing horizon

[00:32:00] In the middle of the sea Everything floating on top of that You know Do you see Fallout in 3D? I haven't yet 3D is exquisite I've heard that It's like the best post conversion Must Go up to 84th Street So it's still playing in 3D

[00:32:12] And see if the bulb is pretty good It's a good bulb It's a good bulb Which you really gotta find This is what I love about Ray Because you need it to be bright He talks about He knows what he does at the bulbs

[00:32:21] You gotta tell me where the good bulbs are I've seen I saw it Opening day at Arclight in 3D In LA Which was just perfect And then Saw it IMAX 2D Saw it on a shitty multiplex In Florida 2D And then saw it up on 84th Street

[00:32:36] So you haven't done 4DX yet I missed 4DX I heard it was amazing I heard it was amazing too Our friend Bobby Finger He said it was phenomenal And it's like Literally the thing that I feel most impeded In my current state of back injury

[00:32:49] Is that I can't see 4DX movies Had to pass on the Meg I've had to pass on Fallout All I wanna do is be 4DX Left and right What I'm gonna say is that That tarmac in Fallout Is one of the most memorable things In the movie

[00:33:00] That opening And it's very much like What the water in this film feels like Where it's just anytime You see it It's just glorious That's fucking awesome So he gets into that thing He gets into the idea of shooting the movie In India and in Beijing

[00:33:16] Places that don't really have Taiwan Taiwan, sorry, sorry He goes home Taiwan and Pondicherry And these are places that don't really Have production infrastructures Certainly not for a movie like this Certainly not Pondicherry Which is like The opposite end of India From where the film industry is

[00:33:32] The big film industry Right, but they shoot obviously The opening stuff The home stuff And Pondicherry And then they shoot all the Water tank stuff in like Taiwan That's interesting I didn't know that Yeah He returns to Taiwan basically as Like the prince of the country Yes

[00:33:48] You know it's a He's like the national hero I honestly think Is he really that He's that highly regarded I mean he did make like He won an Oscar He got a little bit like Tiger One Jackson bringing the Home He basically did that thing

[00:34:00] Where it's like if you go home With a movie With a budget this big They will give you an airport Yeah They give him an airport They rolled everything out Right, they filmed this movie in an airport Because they didn't have like They're just like Just take it

[00:34:12] Right, there wasn't like A tank there was in a studio They were just like We'll give you the amount of space To be able to build them Yeah, you're right In a disused airport I will say that every time I visited an Anglicet

[00:34:21] It's never been like a proper studio Like it's never been some normal He doesn't like just go to Burbank Ice Storm is shot in the In the Armory up in Harlem On 134th Street The home of the Harlem Hellfighters Sure And was so cool In Atlanta

[00:34:37] Some funky warehouse They all made this movie in like An abandoned airport Filled with dog shit Yeah, he's never even made a sound stage movie I think they're always pushing I think they're always putting the money on the screen And I really admire it It's never like

[00:34:49] Oh, this is a really great craft service table It's like even when it's a big movie Let's push this I have Billy Lynn question now Because I believe on next week's episode Which we definitely haven't recorded We'd say that it was shot

[00:34:59] And it was definitely really short and complex We'd say it was shot in a stadium in Dallas But we don't say Like someone said that We were like I can't remember which of us No one's to blame here It's all good It was Dave

[00:35:09] But it was shot in Atlanta The stadium scenes Yeah Did they just use the Atlanta stadium? No, there was a Okay, so the set that I visited You don't remember it's okay Was in Atlanta and it was a warehouse Where they had like The interiors in Iraq

[00:35:22] And they had like his house Right, I mean you were in the office So basically it was all that stuff There was a stadium That was about to be demolished That they shot all of this Easy Because I was just wondering Like how they accomplished The stadium stuff

[00:35:35] It's crazy Anyway, cool Good to know So whatever we say next week I do love that about him And that's one of the things I feel like we've talked in this many series Is he's got a really good sense of place His locations don't feel arbitrary

[00:35:47] And the movies feel very tied to them So yeah, I mean Which makes this movie Sort of an odd duck In his career up until this point Because you have a film Who's like centerpiece Middle act Is entirely A CGI created environment Right But yes

[00:36:06] He throws out this list of demands It has to be 120 million dollars I have to shoot it in 3D Which hasn't really been proven At this point I want to cast an unknown 16 year old To play the lead part Because it has to be someone

[00:36:17] The audience doesn't have a relationship with Like as opposed to the super famous person That could play this part Right, which is the other crazy thing It's a movie where by design There's no bankable movie star That can place in Even in supporting roles

[00:36:31] There aren't really positions like that Other than The one they try to do Now this speaks to Ray and our My, I can't speak today Jesus Christ Our crazy relationship to this movie Which is that Ray and I who were not yet friends at the time

[00:36:49] Years later found out That we were both at the same screening of this movie Okay That was a work in progress Friends and family screening Okay Why were you at this screening Because Ang Lee's Producing partner Former assistant Lived in my building growing up

[00:37:02] And my father had friendly conversations With him in the elevator So you got an invite What's he up to now You know And he go, Hulk it's going to be very crazy You know Honey mungs balls, man Right, that's what he said Lest cautions

[00:37:13] And he went, not for kids Not for kids Like he threw out his like One sentence in the elevator ride Broke back mountain Really good Very sad You know, it was like Very quick pitch on whatever the movie was Before he got to like

[00:37:23] The 8th floor or whatever And He reached out to my dad and said So we've picture locked this film In terms of Not picture locked But we've locked our edit We think we have our cut We haven't started the effects They're going to be so expensive

[00:37:36] That we want to make sure that Edit is perfect before we actually Do all the effects Right Would you want to come to this Friends and family screening And give notes My dad said I will probably fall asleep My dad's very bad at staying awake During movies

[00:37:48] Did he fall asleep during Brewster No, he didn't That's like his favorite movie ever It's a weird movie Yeah That movie's weird Yeah That's what he said after we saw it Gryff, I gotta say That movie is so weird And he's right It is weird It's very weird

[00:38:03] If my father was famous I would be on Saturday Night Live now I like honed my impression of my father So meticulously Oh, you think Sure Because they'd be like We've got to get someone who can play Peter Newman On the show Gryff, I took That movie

[00:38:17] It's so far out there Do you think Saturday Night Live Is interested in someone doing Ethan Hawke monologuing about Elvis In The King Can you do Ethan Hawke impression The thing about Elvis Is he always went for the money And I say I lose it

[00:38:28] I can do the thing about Elvis You're getting Mike Fright You had it really good Right before you recorded It's not about Mike Fright It's about It just has to be sort of Bubbling within me Our mutual friend Who introduced us, Jordan Fish Hey, Jordan

[00:38:41] He made an AI Where you could text with Ethan Hawke That was basically Just took really pretentious Ethan Hawke interview answers And just gave oblique answers To whatever you were saying And it was awesome Can I tell a terrible Ethan Hawke story?

[00:38:55] And the person who's terrible in the story is me No Fine Go ahead How short is it? Very short I filmed a short film in high school And I needed an office space in it Because in high school I made short films about people Who worked in offices

[00:39:09] An experience you were deeply familiar with Everyone else was making short films About kids hanging out Right And then I made these films That started adults who didn't go to our school And everyone would be like What the fuck is this? And it was like Yeah But so

[00:39:22] I got a friend of my father's To give me their office Over the weekend And be like Hey four teenagers And a random 35 year old man Are gonna come into your office On Saturday And shoot a bunch of scenes And they were like Here you go

[00:39:35] Here are the keys Okay And Ethan Hawke was using a back room In the office at the time As like his temporary office And we found it so funny That there was like this big Ethan Hawke Like nameplate on the thing And then he had his little like

[00:39:48] Not mailbox But his little like Folder to put like mail into Sure Right And the guy The lead in my movie What did you do? Had this big beard And we had to cut it to then Shoot earlier scenes Before the beard has grown out Okay

[00:40:01] And we collected all the beard Clipings and we put them in an envelope And put them in Ethan Hawke's folder Why'd you do that? Horrible That's terrible I said the story makes me look bad Yeah it does We thought it was really funny Cause we thought

[00:40:13] Like will he open this And be like Gotta get it That is profound man Think about Elvis Yeah Oh my god The thing about Elvis I love that he's in that Elvis documentary Just talks about Elvis for a while And at no point is it like

[00:40:29] Ethan Hawke's relationship with Elvis is this Cause he doesn't have one Yeah He just wants to rap about Elvis I just love how much Ethan Hawke has figured out his thing And how much we're all like Yeah we're on board now I love it We're 100% on board now

[00:40:40] So on board Anyway You guys were at the same screening Which was Here's the movie with zero visual effects So this film came out November November 2012 So when's this screening do you think? I think this was September 2011 Does that sound right? This is like a long time before

[00:40:55] Or is it earlier than I feel like it was like September 2010 Does that make any sense? No that seems crazy It feels more like the summer to me No yeah it's But was it 2010 or 2011? No this film This film was shot in 2011

[00:41:07] Okay so I think it was during the summer 2011 Sure He took a big sip of coffee Yeah believe so It was like a year in change Before the movie came out That makes sense And we watched this cut That is near identical to the movie

[00:41:18] That you now see Sure But where the kid was visibly in a tank Okay sure You could see the green screen walls around him You could see the green screen reflecting on the water The CGI was very sort of like pre-viszy So it's just like

[00:41:31] There's a tiger but it's just like a little video game It looks like a PlayStation 2 tiger If anyone wants to know exactly what this looks like This is public Okay This stuff is if you just google HALAN H-A-L-O-N Entertainment It's a pre-vis company

[00:41:44] They did a pre and post-vis And you can watch But it's the post-vis that you saw right? Yes I was watching this video Am I correct in remembering that the tiger was grey That it like was and colored in No it was color

[00:41:55] No it looks exactly like this It has like a texture map on a pretty simple mesh So it looks like a Tomb Raider Like early Tomb Raider Tiger Yes But you should also check out the other HALAN Entertainment Because they basically have pre-vis stuff for red tails

[00:42:07] That's fantastic And for Deepwater Horizon Which is fantastic As well as Ghostbusters These are just These are amazing to watch Then check it out Look at the video Ben is watching the video He's peeping the video It's cool right? The movie shredded This is the thing that's amazing

[00:42:27] Even with this level of like really simple You know, Lores The movie fucking killed People were into it And that was the thing I found most impressive was Like as opposed to Imagining you watch an unfinished Pre-VFX cut of like Attack of the Clones

[00:42:42] Where it's all shot in a green screen And without those backgrounds And without those elements There is nothing You could tell how much thought he put into The framing, the construction of the sequences Like there was still very clear visual storytelling

[00:42:56] In the journey of him on the boat and his survival Without all the elements there Yeah, and I think a third of the Tiger shots Were an actual Tiger Yeah, there's obviously real Tiger Mixed in when you're watching it with They never had What's the actor's name?

[00:43:10] Sora Shama Yeah, they never had him and the Tiger In the same shot Two shots of the Tiger isolated for those sort of close-ups Or sometimes they composite together A lot of that they then used as reference material And re-did in CGI

[00:43:23] But a lot of like the close-up Tiger moments Are real Basically everything with the Tiger They got a real Tiger to do it And they filmed it They had like a live action unit And then they had basically a big blue cage

[00:43:35] They had a boat inside of it And there was four Tigers With like various levels of animalistic You know, like They basically had been named Jonas That had been kind of like raised as a human Like in a bed in Canada

[00:43:49] Like it slept in the bed with this trainer And that was the sweetheart And he went to Vassar, right? Exactly for real And so that one is like whenever it's like Very sensitive My mother said like Oh yeah, I was in the cage with Jonas That's fine

[00:44:02] But the other ones were like Let's all stay out of the cage Yeah, I would not to be clear Go anywhere near a Tiger Never On season one of the tip When we had the midnight the talking dog Cool They had two dogs on set And the trainer

[00:44:14] I was like, what's the difference between the two dogs? And he was like One of these dogs is better at stunts One of them is better at dialogue But you saying that Jonas was like the sensitive Tiger It is like certain like animals

[00:44:25] You're like, oh this guy's better at close ups It's for the show For whatever reason This animal you can project emotions onto I've done some heavy lifting directing animals in my life And they're definitely It's like they do different things And you swap them out Yeah

[00:44:38] No, it's crazy With this dog Like the dog had some intelligence in its eyes And they were just putting meat on a stick And making them look at different marks But that dog sells it more In its body language That then when you put the Mr. Ed

[00:44:51] Like talking mouth over it You know Yeah It fucking works Just the thing about directing animals is like You set up What you need to do is You need to set up a system of positive reinforcement Where you basically make a deal With the animal

[00:45:03] So that they know if they do this They get that And basically you have animals That have either bought in Yes To society and capitalism or not Yeah They're like, oh I'll do this Even if it's uncomfortable for a second Because I know I'll get this treat

[00:45:15] The thing they would do with Midnight Was they'd say like Good take, pay him And then a guy would walk over with a treat And it was like that was like the payment system Sure Of like positive like Pavilion reinforcement I prefer money Sure

[00:45:26] So the other crazy thing About this earlier version we saw Is that clearly the studio was like We need one big movie star in this And Eng Lee called upon His previous collaborator Yeah Toge McGuire Who he had made two films with Yeah

[00:45:41] At like the beginning of his career Before he became a minted movie star To play the part of Yan Martell Right Except no He plays reporter apparently I remember him explicitly being Yan Martell Or he's that child Exactly That was the thing that they took a picture

[00:45:57] Because in this they make Grave Stahl Reporter No, no, no Really? Yan Martell No, he's an author He says I loved your first book And he's like I threw away my book I'm just going by the incredibly Well known Accurate website Wikipedia Okay

[00:46:15] Where he, I know it's linking No, but here's the thing It's linking to a Hollywood reporter article That says he's playing a reporter I remember him explicitly being Yan Martell But they probably just changed I don't know if you throw his name onto him

[00:46:24] But the crazy thing is They never say his name in this movie They got weirdly didactic About trying to make him look Exactly like Yan Martell Someone that people are not familiar With the visual appearance But they probably didn't care about that And can you Google Yan Martell

[00:46:37] Yeah, it doesn't look like I know what Yan Martell looks like But I mean here He's got very distinctive hair He does He's got sort of a bouffant hairstyle A curly mop of lightly parted Yeah Orangey hair Yeah, he's got kind of a Malcolm Gladwell Yes Style

[00:46:55] But you know Right Yes A big blonde fro So they put that wig on Tobi McGuire So he looked like Sean Penn in Carlitos way Correct And it was the single most distracting thing I have ever seen in a movie Because they recast him and reshot it all

[00:47:15] They must have gotten that note so many times I mean this screening we were at Which was like the first time We were really showing the movie to people And I'd say there were probably like 30 people there Right, it was like a pretty big

[00:47:24] It was like a screen at the AMC 25 It was somewhere between 30 and 40 people And afterwards It wasn't like a Q&A session It was like an open forum discussion For like over an hour About all the different aspects of the movie

[00:47:37] And that was the big thing that everyone threw out And it was pretty interesting because like Engley would weigh in with his like Well this is what we were trying to do I'll explain to you why it turned out that way And the thing he said was

[00:47:50] It felt like we didn't want it to be distracting That Spider-Man is in this movie But it somehow became the most distracting thing in the world Right Trying to disguise Spider-Man That doesn't work, right And his performance I remember is being like He feels in it

[00:48:04] He feels committed Like he's certainly trying He's a decent actor I thought his performance was fantastic But you like could not fucking get over it It was like so jarring And especially when like in the middle of the story It cuts back to Tobu McGuire with like this

[00:48:17] SNL level wig It's also like distracting to have like In a movie that's mostly unknown actors And then like Irfan Khan, right To cut to someone who is like So iconic to American audiences Certainly at that point is still like

[00:48:32] You know very well known and associated with like A really big blockbuster role And to just cut back to him wearing like A mad TV get up I also think what's with Irfan Khan so good in this movie So fucking good

[00:48:43] He has so many pivot points that could Fantastic Where things could get by the film Like he just catches and goes like This is now nailed down Everything's gonna have to next 25 minutes Based off of this one little jet He's one of those just like brutally honest actors

[00:48:55] Extremely crucial to this film I've never seen a movie with him in it before But you just know he's such like an old shoe Like incredibly This guy is a movie star and setting him up With someone like Raif Spall Who just gets like blown over

[00:49:07] And the character is supposed to get blown over That's the thing It kind of was to the movies detriment That you were spending that much time Paying attention to and thinking about Tobu McGuire You kind of need someone to just like Show up and do the job

[00:49:19] I think Raif Spall is a very good actor It feels like almost Raif Spall is good too By designing this movie He's just kind of doing the bare minimum Yeah, he's pretty quiet He's just like lazy way But I think they knew you can't have the guy

[00:49:29] Asking the questions overpower the guy who's answering I like look at his blazer sometimes I think that's cool Yeah I think about the fact that Timothy Spalls is his dad And then I sort of ponder both actors' handsomeness Sure Like how different they are

[00:49:41] You feel like him and Ben Stiller are both just like Waiting for their genetic time bombs to go off You know what I mean? They're just like Yeah, but it's like they'll wake up They're 50 years old And they're like, wait, what, what, what is this? What happened?

[00:49:53] Yeah, Irfan Khan Who is a fantastic actor Whose performance was, I mean it feels like there are Couple pieces of coverage that maybe they reused From our version I can't tell, but it feels like they wholesale I remember, I want to cross-reference with you

[00:50:08] I remember in the version we saw They never left the house Is that incorrect? That's probably incorrect Okay Because all this stuff with them walking around the city I remember it being very housebound Their whole conversation But how, I mean That transition from them on the bench

[00:50:21] To the set piece of the shipwreck There's no way that That's true That is true You know, that's so boarded Yeah Right, there's that sort of crucial moment Where they're looking out at the ships In the, you know Yeah In Montreal or whatever Right And the opening

[00:50:38] The opening chunk, they're very isolated Like they're keeping them very, very isolated coverage Yes So I was watching them being like Right, I guess they must have only shot Rafe Spall stuff and reused all the air from Khan Stuff, but then it starts to become

[00:50:50] More and more than together They probably did a mix, right? Yeah And the thing that I don't understand like Logistically about this movie is both times They shot those bookings and things It was two days That's crazy That is crazy A lot of really heavy lifting to do

[00:51:02] It's a lot of dialogue Yeah, it's just so crazy I mean, crazy to think of him giving That entire performance twice They go away, you know They're in a lot of the first-third of the movie And then they do kind of basically banish

[00:51:12] Once you get to the boat It becomes more present tense It's all until the Carnivorous Island That's when they, and then you Like he's like, the island was carnivorous And they were like, oh right, they're back Here they are Irfan Khan, great actor

[00:51:26] I knew him because he'd been in this movie The Warrior Which was this sort of It's not a Bollywood movie It's like a British Hindi movie That's kind of like a sort of Indian samurai movie It's great that he's awesome And it was the surprise

[00:51:39] Bafta winner of like best British film He was in Salam Bombay, right? Yes, all the way back I didn't see that till later And what had he been I'm trying to think of like He's in like, he's in The Name's Sake He's in The Dark Healing Limited

[00:51:54] And then Slumdog He plays Slumdog obviously The opposite role of this He plays the guy who's asking the questions That sparks the story In Hindi cinema he's often the villain Like he's typecast as a villain And here he's usually like cast as like

[00:52:10] Because then he's in Jurassic World He's in like Amazing Spider-Man 2 He's kind of great in Jurassic World In Amazing Spider-Man No, he's in Amazing Spider-Man 1 Oh, right, right In both of those he plays the businessman Who's like, I'm sure it's fine Both actors play the bad businessman

[00:52:25] In these new Jurassic Park movies Oh, that's weird I know, Rave's Ball is the bad businessman In Fallen Kingdom In a, you know, a bit of a lazy performance I know we know a fence rave But he is just kind of like

[00:52:38] Literally says that line where he's like Well, you know, we gotta make money Or whatever My favorite thing is that Irfan Khan Is like the blue in the Hindi version Of the Disney live action Lion King Not Lion King, Jungle Book No, he was in The Lion King

[00:52:54] Baloo showed up for some reason He's also gonna do the tailspin movie The live action Irfan Khan's doing the live action Oh my god I wrote a paper on like post-marin In some college about tailspin Do you think if I could go back in time

[00:53:06] And sit right here kippling down I'd be like one, don't send your son off towards Gonna scar you forever Bad idea Two, you remember how there's like A bottle of water in your Jungle Book stories Well, that's gonna be in a movie And then that character will be

[00:53:19] A seaplane pilot In a TV show He's gonna run like a seaplane company Right, Shirk Khan's in it too Is he like a mob boss? He's a businessman in the sky's river They've all been like transported to the world Of like bush pilots

[00:53:34] Louis runs the bar that they all hang out at I will say I... Rules Who had that idea? Right, Louis is kind of like the Casablanca Set up like this is Rick's place Yeah, it's like crazy. It's like Roger Rabbit being like an extended riff on Chinatown

[00:53:48] that just like is going over the heads of like every single thing. You should be going to Disney and pitching them. Here's the sideways sequel to that Jungle Book movie that made so much fucking movie. It's also set in the 30s. Yes.

[00:54:00] Like they explicitly reference World War I. That's what I'm saying. It's like very Casablanca. No, I know. But they're not just like, it's not just the dressing. They like a dress that they are in the 30s. Yes. That's crazy.

[00:54:11] Yeah, because like something like Tripp and Dale Rescue Rangers. Also fantastic. But it's like this could just be the timeline. Do you remember the Colt episode? No, I don't remember that. There was an episode about mice that would bathe themselves in soda fountains

[00:54:22] and it was a brainwash Colt. Jesus Christ. It is the best fucking episode. It's so disturbing and like sorrowful. Yeah. But yeah, I think both those shows, I think it's in the run of like after tailspin. It was the Disney Afternoons thing. They're like let's do this revisionist.

[00:54:35] Right, right. With like DuckTales and Darkwing Duck and that whole sort of extended universe they were making. But the weird thing is that like Tripp and Dale Rescue Rangers is like, well you could just go like this as part of the same timeline as the original shorts.

[00:54:47] They went from like fucking with people in trees and just putting on clothes and solving mysteries. Whereas this is like, you like the Jungle Book, right? Yeah, I like the Jungle Book. Okay, okay. Yeah. Forget the Jungle Book except the characters. Yeah. Oh, okay.

[00:54:59] Now do you like bush piloting in the 30s? Do you want them to be living in a town called Cape Suzette, which is a pun on crepe Suzette? I was such a literal kid that when tailspin went on,

[00:55:11] I would like just break down and I asked my parents. I'd be like, has he met Mowgli yet or not? Like I couldn't fucking figure it out. And they were like this is a different balloon. I was like, but it's not. It's not. It's blue. Yeah.

[00:55:25] And anyway, what do you think Rodger Kipling would think of that? I think he'd love it. Yeah, he'd be like, sounds great. Yeah. He'd ask for points. Yeah. The best robot chicken sketch they've ever done is they did a born identity parody where blue is in the jungle

[00:55:40] for Jungle Book and starts having flashbacks to the suppressed memory of him. It's a paceman. Yeah, that's funny. Have you ever seen Dennis Hopper reading that Ruder Kipling poem on the Johnny Cash show? No.

[00:55:51] Google Dennis Hopper reading if the last 10 seconds of it will just make your heart stop. It's incredible. Right. They offered the role to blue. He turned it down. So you guys saw this screening. You saw it with Tobio Guari. You saw it with no visual effects, basically. Right.

[00:56:07] You walked out of there or what? Had you read the book? Knew very little about it. I'm watching it the first 40 minutes. I'm like, was I wrong in thinking this was about a kid in a boat? Sure.

[00:56:17] Because they go, as you said, they go really deep in a setting up his character with a lot of different, not dead ends, but just different areas of just sort of fleshing this kid out and his family and his lineage.

[00:56:29] When it starts with that much stuff with the uncle, I was like, did I read the wrong synopsis of this thing? It's very novelistic, right? Where he's just like, let me explain. This is going to take a while.

[00:56:38] It's also a lot more stylized than any movie he's made up until this point. Yeah, because you've got the guy with the tapered weird body and all the right where you're like, whoa, that's sort of a crazy visual joke from the director of Brokeback Mountain.

[00:56:51] Is aesthetically weirdly kind of this midpoint between Jean-Pierre Genet and M. Night Shyamalan? Like it does feel elements of both those guys. It's also kind of Wes Anderson-y at points. Oh, the opening stop is very art direct, is very colorful, the narration and all of that.

[00:57:05] And I'm watching him like, what the fuck is this movie? I have no idea what it is. Even like the two times he's made more fantastical movies at this point in his career, Hulk is pretty naturalistic. Fratric Tiger is pretty naturalistic, you know? Yeah, I know you're right.

[00:57:18] Like he's working fantastical things into naturalistic environments and then this is like starting out with like ostensibly non fantastical things being presented in a very quirky fantastical way. But that's why I love that early scene when he tries to see the tiger. Yes.

[00:57:33] I think it works because you might watch that scene and be like, what is this? Get a moron? Like you can just hang out with the tiger. But like because everything's been so like light and fairy tale in a lot of ways.

[00:57:44] It kills the whimsy pretty fast in a way that presents an interesting contrast. Yeah. And like you've had this scene where he does pie on all the chalkboards, which also seems sort of like vaguely supernatural, like, you know, like these things that are so heightened.

[00:57:56] And I remember the discussion that I remember him asking the audience in the test screening was like, were you picking up on the fact that all that stuff in being was lies? Yeah. That none of that happened.

[00:58:06] Like that's supposed to be the tell that he's an unreliable narrator. Right. It's all too ludicrous to understand. Yes. Yes. Even just in the way it's visualized and everything. And I look at like these opening like sections

[00:58:18] and even like the background actors feel much bigger than any Angley movie. You know, they're all in this very heightened state. There's the shot of like the two women riding by on the bicycle

[00:58:30] and they're just like too joyous for a guy who's so into like very specific body language. It's like the note is just like be happy. You're in a big movie. You feel like taking Woodstock as more naturalistic performance wise than this? I do. Okay. I do.

[00:58:46] I don't think it's entirely successful performance wise. I mean, you're obviously the best performance in taking Woodstock. Thank you so much. And I think we said that extensively on the episode. Do you know what scene I'm in? I don't think so. The big crazy track.

[00:58:56] I'm at the very end of the track. Okay. Yeah. I mean, that was terrifying. That's fun though. Oh my God. That must have been terrifying because it's like everything has to go perfectly up until you and you're the one who can blow the tape.

[00:59:07] And the secret of taking Woodstock is that every single person no matter what they're dressed as was a part of a casting call for hippies. So those nuns are just like ladies from New Pulse who are super stoned and are blowing it every single time. Yeah.

[00:59:19] These kids showed up with long hair and they were like, well, we need some Hasid's and they shaved their heads except for the payas. That's crazy. Yeah. That's really funny. No, I think taking Woodstock is all over the place.

[00:59:34] Like there's there is, I mean, this is one of the issues of the movie is that there isn't a clear sort of tone to the performance says which usually he's good at getting his entire cast on the same page. Super good. Some people are super big in it.

[00:59:46] Some people are super small in it. This is the first time I'm seeing him make a movie where like everyone's at a heightened level, you know, where it's clearly working in like a fantasy non-literal realm. Sure.

[00:59:56] But I at this point have no idea what the fuck the movie is. So we learn about Pi, Piscine, Molitor, Mattel and his relationship with God and his family. And then they spot like right he practices three religions.

[01:00:06] His relationship with God is very non-literal and trying to get closer to this man rather than practicing any sort of doctrine or any sort of dogma or anything like that. And this is a lot of the book. The movie pairs it down.

[01:00:18] It's kind of like a third, a third, a third, all of it. Sure. Yeah, it's been a while since I read it, but yeah. And then it interested this character that they created that's not in the book who's his love interest, the dancer he recognizes and they like

[01:00:31] circle her, underline it, put it in bold. Like then I met her where it feels like, OK, so this is clearly going to be the main thrust of the movie now. Not at all. Not at all. Forget it. Also Taboo places mother. She's this like extraordinarily famous actress.

[01:00:44] Like that's I feel like for some audiences is just that's the actress where you're like, oh my God, like she's playing this like his mom. Like she's just in the movie. Yeah. Anyway, carry on. Sorry.

[01:00:57] But he said he put her in there because he wanted a sense of what he was losing when he got the book. Yes. This is the grounding before he gets on the boat and then his life hits this new chapter.

[01:01:09] He wanted a sense of something that was like incomplete, right? That he lost behind. It takes until minute 40 for him to the storm to start. Can I just get into like what I think about the open?

[01:01:20] I think that the really as I've gone through it this morning, the way this film like teaches you how to watch it is astoundingly good. And I think that the deployment of the different spectacle is like it stays constantly surprising you and like I think that's

[01:01:39] like the opening is like that sloth shot. Right? I love the fucking opening credits with the animals is wonderful. It's so important that opening credit sequence is like a video game orientation UX kind of like you're like, are you all set? Are you ready to go?

[01:01:55] And it's like your load screen. Yeah. The film takes you through a series of airlocks basically to get to the point where you are really paying attention. Can I remember the opening five minutes of Avatar were rocky? Yes. You know what I mean?

[01:02:07] It's like really funky cutting from like the canopy jungle to like the eyes with the parallax and then the exterior. It's like a mess. And if you watch the extended version where there's like 20 minutes of stuff on earth before that, it's bad. Like it's actively bad.

[01:02:19] It's clear that he wrote this whole opening that didn't fucking work and that's this rocky like, you know what, let's just like as in elegantly as possible get through this shit fast. Whereas this movie is really like setting you into a mindset.

[01:02:29] And I just think that the way that the different like hammers fall and as they're introducing you to different things about this movie like up into like the uncle is great. Yeah. When he shows up with that weird body screen, but then

[01:02:39] that this I was just going through the things that happened in this these series of shots where then he it's like there's this crazy Dutch shot of these people on this on this balcony. And then all of this stuff looks like the fantasy sequence and Sweeney Todd. Right.

[01:02:56] Right. Right. And then somebody just flies. Why are they not just flying? Yeah. You know, like through the foreground and then he happy feeds in the background like that. That's the other thing. He's doing the crazy transitions in this movie.

[01:03:08] He's doing some of the speed racer stuff where you're literally collaging in the weird overlapping. This is just a shot of a man flying. Yeah. I love that shot. Check this out. She goes above him. How high is she supposed to be? What? Yeah.

[01:03:21] By any time he does the guy in the pool with the sky above him, the reflection of the sky on the water. I like lose it in this moment. This is a huge moment for the audience. Yes. The audience like if you've ever seen like a

[01:03:32] shorts program, every film starts in the audience is like how much of these people are going to hurt me. And then there's like the most usually like a first laugh or something where you go like, okay, that was a directing choice of quality enough that I

[01:03:42] will relax and let these people take me. I think choice is the key word. When you see someone who clearly is like doing something specific and it's like I can trust them because they know what they're doing. They haven't lost control of this thing whether

[01:03:53] or not I like it. I remember being actively against the first 40 minutes when I first saw. Okay. I think a lot had to do with me having no sense of what this movie was. Where's the boat? Why? And then the thing you're saying, why am I

[01:04:05] meeting his love interest when she's not going to return? All I just remember was the one sentence synopsis every time a director I like signed on to this movie that like it's a kid in a boat with a tiger. And I'm going like is my memory faulty?

[01:04:16] Is that not what this movie is about? So I'm confused by it and I'm also just thrown off without having seen any sort of promotional material, any clips or anything by just this movie being so aesthetically and totally different than any other way of ever seen.

[01:04:28] I later come to realize I saw it in theaters in 3D when it was released, watched again to last night. Of course what you're saying is he's teaching how to watch the movie. He's setting you into a world. He's inviting you into like the home.

[01:04:39] And I'd also say that the way this movie is described is a lie. It's not a movie about a kid on the boat with a tiger. That doesn't, like it's and they know that and they're trying to make it everything but that basically.

[01:04:50] There's two, there's more than one boat. The boat keeps changing. There's not just a tiger. There's a monkey and a zebra and a hyena. Right. There's like it until you finally get to the shot where it's like, okay now I'm looking

[01:05:04] at a boy and a tiger on a boat and they're like squaring off and then just stays in that shot. And you're like, okay now we're at like the boxing match. Right. And now it's like at that point it's like an hour into the movie. Absolutely. You know?

[01:05:17] In a movie where I always think of this movie as being like 230 plus and it's actually a tight two hours. It's a little over two hours. It's like two hours seven minutes. It moves though. Everything keeps changing. I mean this is also a thing of like

[01:05:26] I worked on a movie that would have a lot of scenes of like spaceships, exterior shots of spaceships going through out of space and it was like... Stars? Yes. Episode four new hope. I do want to... Familiar with it. Yes.

[01:05:38] And the thing was like if we do this literally every single shot will look exactly the same but we need to make a progression. So like this movie if you did it literally could be incredibly visually monotonous but like the ocean is a million different colors.

[01:05:51] There's a million different like it's almost like he's going through train stations. You're like now I'm in this scene and that scene it just... The boat keeps changing. His body keeps changing. Yes. And also like each... I mean what... Because once he gets to the boat

[01:06:04] I mean Annalise's whole pitch was like it has to become like an adventure film at that point. The survival has to be... I need to put a little more emphasis on the series of sort of challenges and tests that this guy goes through

[01:06:15] rather than just the internal spiritual journey. Right but I feel like he's not interested in making like in the heart of the sea or one of those movies that's about just like the human body enduring its greatest test. Or even the shallow. But it also is process based.

[01:06:29] It's very much about this kid learning which I love any process movie. You know in Apollo 13 when they have to make the filter out of just the course you got to put the square peg in the round hole. The best sequence right? The craziest thing about that is

[01:06:41] that it actually happened and that's the craziest thing in the fucking world that NASA had to be like why does that tank not... You have a that and this why are they not compatible? It's like well all right well they

[01:06:52] have this shit we have to make a box that it goes through. Like it's still I love it so much. Apollo 13 a masterful screenplay written by... Kiva Goldsman? John Sales. John Sales wrote Apollo 13? Absolutely. He fought like hell for the credit and didn't get it.

[01:07:05] But if you did not get it, that is... Oh crazy. Okay so that's why I didn't know that. 100% a movie written by John Sales. Yeah because it's credit to Broiles Jr. who's like one of those guys who's got a lot of credits. And then Al Reiner who only

[01:07:17] wrote Apollo 13 and direct and wrote for all mankind space documentary. So like you know whatever. John Sales had that run from like 90 to like early 2000 where he was just like quietly one of the best studio like script doctor punch-up guys. Right and then he makes...

[01:07:35] He writes the notorious Jurassic Park 4 script. Right which sounds fucking amazing and I still wish was... The ideas of which are still being parceled out. That's what's crazy is they've used them in all the other ones. I know but when you read that script you're like it's like

[01:07:48] and you like read those interviews with Spielberg where he's like and now we know what the movie looks like. We've got the story and you're like you thought that was definitely the story? I love it so much. Human Raptor hybrids with guns?

[01:08:01] If you haven't gotten to that point where you feel comfortable doing that then why even make Jurassic City? That's true. Do you know what I'm saying? Like just fucking go for it. His quick in the dead script rules. Really? That's a good movie. You ever seen it?

[01:08:13] I haven't. We gotta do Rami. Saddest music in the world and quick in the dead are the only films that have bracket structures. I know it. Oh like like you're a bracket structure. It's very satisfying. Yeah, I just love guys like that

[01:08:26] who like didn't even view it as like a one for me one for them thing because like John sales also came out of Cormand. That's the thing. Like he loves just being like writing assignment fix this make it better. I agree but read my book by Roger Cormand

[01:08:38] how I made 100 films and never lost a dime. It's the best book ever. Hey Ben. David. I heard you finally got yourself a mattress. Yes. I got a Casper mattress because I found an apartment. I have a home. You have four walls and a roof now. Yes.

[01:08:56] And in that space goes a Casper mattress. Indeed. How is it going for you? Oh my God. It's really great. They made the whole process so easy because again like moving is so a nightmare. Right. And Casper you can just buy online at your convenience

[01:09:13] and then just get shipped. Yeah. It's in a box. Yeah. And there's like it's not like a door size. I'm trying to think of how to describe it. You know what? There's that. Oh. The thing that keeps the water cold. It's about the size of a mini fridge.

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[01:10:12] streamlined design at a price that won't keep you up at exactly. Yeah. The wave is the one with the premium support system patent pending that mirrors the shape of your body. So there's a lot of options. They're all designed and developed and assembled in the US.

[01:10:28] And the affordable prices it's because Casper cuts out the middleman and just sells it directly to you. It's free shipping and returns are also free in the US and Canada. And if you're not completely satisfied you can just put it back in his

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[01:11:16] Again, if you want to get $50 towards select mattresses you can go to Casper dot com slash check and use promo code check at checkout terms and conditions apply. And yeah, I mean get yourself a good night's sleep like Ben finally can do after weeks of homelessness.

[01:11:35] Oh, my God. Sorry about that. Right. This is actually happening. It happened. It happened and I know you're processing it now and it's tough but we have to keep talking about the movie. We have to survive. We have to go on. So minute 305, the family dinner

[01:11:51] the father announces the intention to move and sell the zoo. Adil Hussein placed the debt. Yes. Sort of a bad zoo boy if you will. No, I think he's pretty good zoo boy. Okay. I think he's pretty good zoo man. I don't know man.

[01:12:06] He's locking up the zoo and putting it in a boat. He does lock the gates. That is true. He locks the gates after the zoo. He tranquilizes the banana. Yes. Which I love that too. I love just watching him cut the banana and put the things inside. Yeah.

[01:12:20] And just how loving the narration is about his dad and how he's realizing his dad is totally a fish out of water as well. He's a businessman. Doesn't really know how to deal with these animals. Yeah. This and how they're all like that, that, that,

[01:12:32] that teenage thing where you're like, oh, I'm not the only important person in the world. That sort of like growing realization. Yeah. My parents are flawed people with like their own problems. Yeah. But he's on the ship for like one day. Yeah. Where the only real dramatic

[01:12:46] thing that happens is a fist fight with Jarrah Depardue as, you know. Here's one thing I wanted to say. Yeah. This movie has Irfan Khan in it. Yes. Who is like now older, but certainly at, you know, at a moment in his career was like a sex

[01:12:59] symbol in his car. Sure. And Jarrah Depardue now aging is like, you know, he's like, I'm not going to be a big fan of his car. I'm not going to be a big fan of his car. He's like, I'm not going to

[01:13:09] be a big fan of his car. I don't know why he's like this. He's like talking about Chipotle on top. You know, what's interesting is that they're talking about the same thing. It's like, they're talking about the same thing. But then the news brought in by Jarrah Depardue

[01:13:24] and he was like, you know, who is this guy. I'm sure you've hear about it. But it's just like, I'm not going to be the guy who's like the father of the boy with the son, but then, it's just like the son was like,

[01:13:39] But what's crazy is I remember seeing this whatever it was like seven years ago, right? And being like Jesus Christ, Rartepardue does not look good. And then watching it now having seen like the sunshine in, I'm like, Rartepardue's looking pretty good.

[01:13:53] Right because in Let the Sunshine In you'd literally think he's like furniture for a while because he's so massive. You're like, is that a credenza she's talking to?

[01:14:00] There's a moment when they first cut to a close up of Rartepardue at the very end of Let the Sunshine In where I went like... It looks like a rock monster. Wait a second. Is this movie in 3D?

[01:14:09] Because it felt like his nose was coming out of the screen. I don't mean to mock Rartepardue's, you know, middle age. He's pretty old. He's like seven years old. You know, older, gate mileage though. But it's crazy.

[01:14:26] I don't mean to mock Rartepardue, but let's remember he peed on the carpet in the middle of a plane because he drank too much white wine. In protest. Yeah. And he also keeps like moving to increasingly like oppressive countries because he like doesn't

[01:14:38] like paying taxes, right? Isn't that a thing of his? Yeah. But he keeps on making asterisks moving. Of course. Well, he was... That's the thing. I think he buffed up to play obelix and then he just stayed there. Yes. And now he is obelix.

[01:14:51] Yeah. But I just like that like asterisks has changed like four times. I think four or five different actors have played. Yeah. They're always like cycling in a new asterisk. Right. Rartepardue is ready. Right. You know what I love about asterisks?

[01:15:01] He gets younger. Obelix stays the same age. Let's see. What's the last time you played obelix? That's our reference to the very successful French live-action asterisks film adaptation series. He hasn't made one since 2012 where they saved Britannia. Okay. Yes. There you go. Interesting. Obelix.

[01:15:23] So, Rartepardue comes in, he looks like shit and he's looking for a fight. This guy is just a fucking ass. Yeah. He looks like a pile of mashed potatoes, but he's serving rice. Right. Pouring gravy on top of it. They ask for no gravy because the white's vegetarian.

[01:15:36] And no sausage and he takes umbrage at this. Right. The cow the veal came from is vegetarian. Right. Right. You know, that and that. All that. Gets into a fight, a very sort of centered sailor comes, breaks it up, sits down next to them, explains to them like.

[01:15:52] Yeah. And I don't think the scene works without that lovely scene with the one of the bits where I like really key into the movie is those those those silver plates. In their dinner. Oh yeah. You know what I mean?

[01:16:02] Like that's one of the things where you're looking at it and I'm like, I don't know what that is exactly, but I know that is correct. Sure. And it's incredibly tactile. Someone's done the research. Yeah. And like just seeing how lovely their life is,

[01:16:12] you really do feel bad for this family now that they're being like put through this terrible experience even before the shipwreck. Yeah. Then the shipwrecks. Once again, I remember being very distracted by Dupardue the first time,

[01:16:22] but now I totally get it that you need someone to make that much of an impression that quick. You need that character to pop. You need to be in the back of your brain for the rest of the film. He's gonna be important to great.

[01:16:29] Even though you'll never see him again. Right. Now, I remember in the cut we saw there was a scene where Pie potentially hallucinates Dupardue coming back onto the boat. Absolutely. Right. It cut out of the film. Interesting. He like wakes up.

[01:16:44] He's like thought that would like muddy it too much. And you see a silhouette of like him coming back with a knife and then Richard Parker. No, no, you're just thinking of the scenes with the orangutan. Who is Duparduesque?

[01:16:54] Even though he's not supposed to correspond to the orangutan. Did they double cast him in this one? No, you need to remember him. I must stop being mean to him. I was watching this just on the way.

[01:17:04] And he's also going to be our guest on next week's episode. Sorry, what were you saying? Bonjour, Blanc Chouc. On the way over here, I had forgotten and I've watched the last scene like in the cabin the way over here and it's like it's a murder confession. Yes.

[01:17:14] And I think the you remembering how unpleasant this guy is really makes you like, okay, I get it. It's like and you go like there was a horror for him in murdering someone so evil. Right. And so just got staying.

[01:17:26] And also like, I mean the movie and the book makes this even clear like he won't, he won't doesn't want to kill anything. And the movie you see that he's so sad when he has to kill something, an animal. But yeah, because he's a real strict aesthetic vegetarian.

[01:17:41] He sees God and everything as well. Because it's truly horrible. He saw his mother get killed by Jorard Depradiou and then had to kill Jorard Depradiou. That's ugly stuff. He saw a man get eaten. Yeah, eaten. Eaten.

[01:17:54] Do you know the craziest thing I found about this movie on Wikipedia? Or I found this through going to the Wikipedia entry for the book. Sure. Is the reason he named the tiger Richard Parker is that there were like three different instances

[01:18:06] of a man named Richard Parker on a lifeboat involved in cannibalism. Jesus. And one's an Edgar Allen Poe story and then two of them are like real stories. Right. People just decided to pay homage to Edgar Allen Poe. All in the 1800s.

[01:18:19] Yeah, but the all three guys were named Richard Parker. I'm joking. That's crazy. And he was just like that has to mean something. If guys named Richard Parker keep on ending up on lifeboats either being victims or adjacent to cannibalism. A cabin boy. Yes.

[01:18:35] In a famous legal case in 1884. Jesus Christ. And then a third Richard Parker drowned so his dead body was cannibalized. Yes. Very, very nice. No problem there. No. Great. Great stuff. And then the fourth Richard Parker is played by Campbell Scott and the amazing

[01:18:52] Spider-Man 2 in which he turns out to be a secret agent. I forgot that his name is Richard Parker. Richard Parker. It is kind of a master stroke of the book in the movie, but I think especially the

[01:19:03] movie where you're watching the tiger, the fact that he has a full proper gentleman's name, like a first and last name helps you like without anthropomorphizing him, it helps you really invest in him as like a real creature. Yeah.

[01:19:16] You know because if he was named like claw or something, you'd be like, that's fucking tiger. Richard Parker. Like how do you do? Tigers are just. Nice to see you sir. There's some word for them. Let me look it up that people in environmentalism use for animals like

[01:19:30] tigers and elephants, a charismatic megafauna where it's like these things are so insane and iconic to people that you kind of can't believe that it's real. And that's why you center your environmental campaigns on a tiger or we have to save the elephant. Yes.

[01:19:44] Like you know because people like if I saw a tiger and I've seen tigers in like the zoo or whatever. Humblebar. I've been to the zoo. Humble brag. You know you are kind of like oh right this is like a functioning creature. Yes.

[01:19:59] And like you're also looking at your like this is designed to destroy and murder something fast. Well and they have this weird intelligence in their eyes that is placed where you're just like this is a thing that like gets me and it's like no this

[01:20:10] is things just wants to eat shit. He's just fucking a hangry. So get ready to say humble brag. I was just in Alaska on vacation. Okay yeah that's fine. You're allowed. You work very hard.

[01:20:19] And when he said that when the dad says that line about you're just seeing I was thinking about all the animals I saw in Alaska where you're like oh there's so much going on here. He's like well no I'm reflecting myself a little bit in Alaska.

[01:20:31] Did you go to Alaska by yourself? No I went with my girlfriend. Humble bra. And Richard Lawson. Double humble. Not for all of it but for a bit of it. And I saw like a bald eagle and that's another one where you see that

[01:20:44] you're like oh all of this creature is all pointy ends. Like it's all sharp. He lives to destroy things. But certain like animals like that that just project a certain amount of sophistication. Otters are the big ones.

[01:20:57] Moment at the end of Fantastic Mr Fox where he like sees the wolf in the distance and he's like I get you. You know right when you like see an eagle and you're like dude I understand and the eagle is like I don't know what you're talking about.

[01:21:06] I want I want a rat. Right the eagle is like I can see like two miles that way. And there's a rat and I want to eat it.

[01:21:15] Right and you just look at the eagle and you're like man this country how do we go so far off track. America is a flawed but fascinating experiment in democracy. And you see otters I see otters.

[01:21:26] So many otters and they lay on their backs in the water and then they see so many otters in Alaska. Oh okay. Not all the time. Yeah. And they put little. Dude you live in Brooklyn.

[01:21:35] They catch crabs and they put them on their tummy and then they just kind of like eat them and I'm like I eat crab. On my tummy. I was like I am not a dog person. Interesting. Okay.

[01:21:46] But I've had you know like any of you had like a really important relationship with any cats in your life? About my dresser kittens. Right. Yeah exactly. So I'm a dog person. Yeah because I'm not a cat person historically. I don't like them. I like cat person.

[01:21:59] If you have anything pig this film will play on like and there's certain moments like when he's when he's thinking whether to kill him with a hatchet. Uh-huh. I swear to God they make the water pull back his face in the exact same way when you're

[01:22:11] petting your cat's face. Yeah. That's what their mouth does. There's like a lot of stuff I think where they're like if you have that in you they really play on your heart strings. I also think like I've never owned a pet. Yeah.

[01:22:24] But my father has two dogs that he calls the boys. That's by the way how he got himself into financial trouble. Each of them cost 2.5 million dollars and they only eat quail eggs.

[01:22:36] Um but he calls these dogs the boys and I like will dogs sit when my whole family goes away because my family goes on vacations without me. All the time. By my choice and um when I'm with the dogs I find myself like talking to them a lot

[01:22:52] and informing these very odd like intellectual relationships with how I think they're processing things in the same way I did when I found these like cats at 2 o'clock in the morning and I'm like having conversations with them. Right.

[01:23:04] And I think this movie gets at that kind of thing especially if you don't like have a natural casual relationship with an animal of just like if you're with an animal isolated for

[01:23:14] that long or a period of time that is high stress you just start to be like I need to feel like I'm relating to something else that I'm not just here by myself. And that's so much of what sustains Pi right? Yes.

[01:23:26] Is that like that's what he says about Richard Parker. Right. Like I felt like there was someone else with me that I had to keep an eye on and almost take care of. And that he says that kind of. And I do be alert and it saves. Right.

[01:23:37] It like gives him something to live for and a challenge every day to work on. My favorite thing which Ray you alerted me to is that because they didn't want to make his like survival tactics look too professional because he's not a kid who's like equipped for the

[01:23:53] circumstance do you know about this David? I know. Angley asked his son like here are a bunch of oars and like a life vest what would you make out of this? Okay. And his son who was like not a survival expert. Sure.

[01:24:04] Made the thing that the kid made and then like gave it to the art department was like replicate this. Wow. Like a lot of the tactics he uses are things that he asked his son who was like not an outdoorsman. Right.

[01:24:14] But he was just kind of like well. Yeah you got 10 minutes here you go. I guess this is your base and then the oars kind of rather than have some production design right. And I think that's one of the best coolest stuff is the different rafts in the

[01:24:25] progression. The triangle thing is amazing. It was a collaboration because he basically they just made him go in the pool and just tie these things together and he said he's very bad at tying knots. Yeah. Sure.

[01:24:34] And all that stuff but then what they did for the punch up on all that design was they got their shipwreck survival consultant. You remember this guy's name? It was in all the books or some of the stuff. No. I'll find his name in a second.

[01:24:47] I know who you have got. There was a guy who survived for two months on the open sea who was on set every day and like a huge part of the pre-production. Jesus Christ. And was just like seems like a pretty rangy guy.

[01:24:57] There's like a subtext in the book of like that he needs to calm down a couple because he's very still a little out there. Maybe understandably you never get over something like that. It changes you permanently. Certainly especially when you're recreating it.

[01:25:12] Like that's the most Hollywood thing in this movie is that like pie is like pretty well balanced. Yeah. Yeah. He kind of figured it out. But I mean I think that play that that's part of the what's the fuck Jesus narrator unreliable narrator thing. Yes.

[01:25:28] Where like for one you sort of start to realize like oh I can't really trust the paint pictures painting for me but I understand why he's doing it and then two it's like he gets dumped on the beach at the end of the movie and then

[01:25:38] at the end of this at the end of the movie you see his family come home. Yes. And you're like so he has figured it out but you're also like but there is like 30 years here. Yeah. That are unspoken and like who knows like how you feel back.

[01:25:52] Sure. Also my big takeaway from the movie is that he makes this story because that's the only way he can like process this thing and be sane and move on. It's too painful. Yes.

[01:26:02] That was another thing I remembered from the cut we saw is you never saw the family. It cut before they walked in the door for when him just referencing them. Oh interesting sure. And everyone was like I kind of want to see the wife because we kept on

[01:26:12] wondering if he ended up marrying the lady from India. When you don't see her you wonder if that's like the super pat kind of like full circle thing that they were aiming for. Yeah but it's not.

[01:26:21] Oh I do too but if you don't see her you wonder if that's what they were trying to set up. I just circle back I think the design that thing when they got that guy to

[01:26:29] punch up was genius about it is that all that design is a collaboration between someone who is pie at the beginning of the journey and pie at the end. Yeah that's cool which is really cool because I like when he sort of

[01:26:39] starts putting like slats on it too he's got like some flora. Neither of which are production designers. Yeah so cool. Right right that's what's really cool about it. Can we talk about that color of the inside the boat though? Oh sure.

[01:26:50] I'd pay money just to see that color. Don't you think? Well I talked to me it's just wonderful. I mean just the fact that you get to spend so much of the film looking at that color is just a joy.

[01:27:01] I will say my favorite stuff in this movie is when he gets like very surreal with the colors of the sky. That's not I think of the sky especially obviously the whale scene. There's that section where it's sort of like magic hour sundown and it's like all orange.

[01:27:17] You like that red sort of like yeah. It could be so many different things and that one is it looks so good against the blue and it's just like that shot is obviously kind of extraordinary. Why'd they crop it like that? I don't know. That's crazy. Google images.

[01:27:29] There's the one that's interrupted by the can you know what I'm saying? Oh yeah. I think you're watching yeah like I just love that shit. I will say like we were talking about the ways in which the effects

[01:27:43] haven't held up and like I think Richard Parker is pretty impeccable. Pretty good. Some of the yeah basically 90%. And performance wise it's like incredible. You just totally fucking buy it and you buy into it as a character with emotions and all of that.

[01:27:58] I think some of the sort of environmental stuff when it's not that heightened and stylized feels very like plasticky to me. When they're going for just like this is just the sky in the water. It feels a little like too cartoony for me.

[01:28:13] I prefer when they push it into that more abstract zone you know. Okay. And I think it also like works with the journey he's on more when it just starts to feel like he's going through like you know. Psychological space. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:28:27] The toughest stuff they've got is the tiger being wet anyway. That's that's the only thing I'm thinking of. That looks so hard. It just it doesn't look funny. It looks fine. I think one of the most audacious things is that first real close-up of the tiger

[01:28:38] that they do that I think is CG right now. I think it is. I know what you're talking about. They cut from a quivering like spank my piece of meat. Yeah. Like in 3D right up next to you.

[01:28:47] So this is real meat and then they show you their CG close-up of the tiger and go like look we I will put my art next to that on the wall. That was the big thing he said was like he went to Rhythm and Hughes the visual effects

[01:28:59] company and said like I'm going to put real animals in this movie. And they need to work seamlessly side by side with CGI animals. Right. Which is like a big ask. I don't even know if it's a ask as much as boxing them in. Yes.

[01:29:11] You know what I mean? Right. This is what you're going to have to do. Yeah. Right. This is the standard I'm holding you because I like I've definitely I've I've directed you know projects where the effects were done by

[01:29:20] NPC that did all like the environments on this and like I definitely have worked with a lot of different animation studios and effects studios and there is like there's always this moment where you're like I need you to do this extra 15% and they're like we're done working.

[01:29:31] It's impossible. And I think that one of the master strokes was a box them in. Yeah. They didn't have an out. Yes. So I mean we kind of brushed over the initial like hyena orangutan. Did we just skip the shipwreck? Oh yeah. The because the fucking shipwrecks incredible.

[01:29:48] That's a yeah. Okay. Let's talk about the trip more. That's when I like started going like okay I see what he's doing here. Like here's great. It's clear like turning point in the movie. Okay. He's like upending everything. Yes.

[01:29:59] The dynamic ups and downs of that sequence if you go through and do like the Robert McKee like for every good thing then it has to be followed by a bad thing followed by a good thing followed by bad it's like the like him seeing that red light

[01:30:09] and being like okay I'm good and then looking at the guys and when the guys get washed overboard like that's what it looks like in real life when bad stuff happens. Yeah. You know that little flashlight going out in the ocean is so scary and then the framing

[01:30:21] I was going through like frame by frame when he runs down the stairs you don't see that the bottom floor is flooded until you hear him scream like an animal and then he jumps and when he lands in the water then you realize you're

[01:30:31] underwater and that's when the zebra shows up and I think that zebra is the whole movie. Yeah. Yeah. Right. That's the like opening the doors to the wizard of Oz that's the moment where

[01:30:39] and I love that if you go back and listen to that scream it's so painful to listen to and it's at the exact moment that he kind of like maxes out all his levels on just terror and trauma that the magic starts. Right.

[01:30:52] Yeah and the zebra thing is like so kind of absurd as an image in the middle of a sequence that is like so upsetting viscerally. Yeah. You know but he no I think it's just like really really well done shipwreck stuff. Yeah it is.

[01:31:08] I like the shot of the boat going in the water the best I think they might just be burned in my brain because it was in the trailer like they sure think they just know how visceral that feels the shot of it like slamming. Yeah.

[01:31:19] I'm trying to think of something else from the shipwreck. I mean I like that shot of the. He's hovering. Yeah. I mean that that's like the idea that it goes into the Mariana trench and James Cameron could do a follow up movie about what's going on down there.

[01:31:31] Pies of the day. Yeah the shipwreck you know well I don't know what the boat's called. But yeah I mean he's fighting to get on. I mean he he wants the Sim Sim. Yeah it's a hey it's the Sim. It's the Sim Sum baby.

[01:31:44] David Sim Sum David L. Sim Sum. But yeah I mean he doesn't want to get on the lifeboat because he wants to save his family. They throw him in. Yeah no I know.

[01:31:53] With Depper do the sailor right and then the animals get thrown into I mean it's just like chaos and he wakes up in this boat situation with this collection of animals where like this happens very quickly. Is it this fast in the book? Pretty much. Yeah okay. Yeah.

[01:32:08] No I was just curious if in the book there's more stuff of him with like all the animals. Oh I guess so but I think the degradation happens sort of one by right where it's like and the same idea that like he thinks Richard Parker

[01:32:21] is gone because he saw Richard Parker in the water. Right. And then there's that moment and it's good in the movie when Richard Parker suddenly like leaps out. Yeah he's been high enough that the hyena drags it under the tarp.

[01:32:32] Right which is pretty much like a great train robbery like direct to camera 3d shot of like the tiger leaping at you. Can I make a Black Panther comparison too? Okay I'd say that this whole section where you're like the problem is the hyena uh-huh.

[01:32:45] Is like that waterfall fight in Black Panther where he has to defend like the crown against his calendar. Ambaco. Yeah and you see like Jesus Christ. That's fucking him. Yeah it couldn't get worse than this. Exactly and then you see like it's like Michael V Jordan's show.

[01:32:57] And you're like oh we are fucked. You know it's like wonderful. Yes. Yeah I love that first waterfall fight scene in Black Panther so much because I mean what I my argument for why Black Panther is like a genuine the like it's a masterpiece. It's a great movie.

[01:33:13] I really need to re-watch it. Is that at the end of the movie when uh Denai Guerrero, like when he's when Kaluya is like you would you know attack me to defend the thing. And she says without question you're like yeah because those are the rules of Wakanda.

[01:33:31] Like a country I have no knowledge of that doesn't exist. It's fantasy and like you're so steeped in like all the traditional movies. And then so two hours later you're just like yeah yeah we gotta protect this fucking place. That's how it works. Don't you know that?

[01:33:46] And like that bit when Ambaco's got him and he looks like like he's gonna have to kill him when he's got him back at you know at the end of that fight. And everyone's like you know you've done great but you gotta tap out like this is

[01:33:58] and you're like yeah come on man you gotta protect the honor of your tribe like that I didn't know existed five minutes ago basically. There's something like very exciting about watching a movie where people are that in love with their country without being zealots. Yes.

[01:34:12] We're just like this country's important means a lot to them. Right and like a lot of Marvel movies are good at that fast world building that you need to do but Black Panther's just especially good. It's the only time they make you actually care about the place.

[01:34:23] Yeah because like in the other ones it's like okay this is a cool place. Right like Asgard books and whatever. You don't care about it. Not really. Yeah I mean whatever. Also it's a people not a place. Yeah well I actually disagree. I disagree with him. Yeah.

[01:34:37] Pretty cool place. Like pretty cool place. Had like a force field and stuff. But yeah I mean this whole survival chunk of the movie is you know the film kind of changes on you in terms of now removing Irfan Khan for a long time.

[01:34:55] Yes exactly you're alone on the boat with these animals quickly animal. The animals do kill each other pretty fast. Right. The hyena kills the other animals. Right and then it's him trying to figure out how to co-habitate with Richard Parker with his own narration in this diary.

[01:35:09] Quickly you know and then it's just them like you know I guess it's like a solid 40 minutes before they read the carnival. Then it's a 16 year old 17 year old who had never acted before. He's good. Carrying an entire movie with CGI. He's good. Yeah he's good.

[01:35:22] Yeah and remember when they gave him so many big parts after this after he made a giant international blockbuster. But I do think this is somewhat the curse of being the unknown actor where they're like You're pie.

[01:35:33] Yeah right well you were great in that but that was clearly just like a fluke right. Like you know I'm only yeah I don't know like you just sort of dismiss it. People dismissively give Ang Lee a lot of credit which like clearly he did some

[01:35:46] incredible stuff in preparing with him. He was in million dollar arm that was his big follow up. He went to NYU undergrad as a filmmaker and in the summer he goes back to India and is in movies and gets paid a lot of money. Really? Absolutely.

[01:36:00] So you know what though do you know what though he's in the regular cast like you know main cast of God friended me on ABC this fall. He's okay. CBS this fall. I mean I like that. I like that.

[01:36:14] God friended him it didn't friend him though he friended his friend the mayor from God friend his friend the mayor show. He's a really good actor. No it's just a very impressive like it sounds like he's doing well he's filled

[01:36:27] in life he has a good career but the thing that makes me angry is when dumb studio executives fall back on this thing of like oh we can't make a movie with like an East Asian lead because none of them are bankable and then when you have

[01:36:39] an East Asian lead movie that makes fucking 500 million dollars worldwide they're like well but that's just the one thing he can do. They don't let people like this become leading men in blockbusters you know. Number one song on Spotify right now is yellow. You know what I mean?

[01:36:55] Is that true? Yeah because of Chris Rizvay. Absolutely yeah 100%. And then whole story of John M. True like writing to Chris Martin and being like I know you turned us down.

[01:37:06] I assume like the studio just sent like a form request or whatever he's like but this song is so important and I loved it when I was younger you know did you read about this? Yes yeah.

[01:37:13] And then like immediately they were just like hey they gave you a thumbs up. He never replied to him but he was just like yeah sure whatever no obviously clearly the song matters to you. Yeah. That was just like this couldn't be a more complicated production you know.

[01:37:28] If you're you know Srirash Sharma you come out of this film you're like I understand everything about how to be a professional on a set. I've gone through the ringer I've done every type of thing. I've worked with effects I've worked practically like you know.

[01:37:41] Do you want to talk about the the rehearsals that they did? Yeah. That's fascinating and I think this fits in well I just for my own personal experience being directed by Ang and and.

[01:37:51] And you did win an Oscar for that performance so you're able to speak from Ray. I sucked in I suck in that I'm the worst part of that for sure. Oh Ray so that's that's not true. You talked about that on the taking.

[01:38:03] I trust we were on the record with many parts of that film that are worse than you. Yeah but I'll say your guys the thesis that it's it's it's body language stuff.

[01:38:11] Yes huge that was the one note I got from him was about the way I was moving my hips. Interesting you know it was like because I was camera operating and when I camera

[01:38:18] operated I tend to kind of shift a little bit give a little parallax you know QC in the moment and he's like no he's got plant there your nodal point and that and it was like the only

[01:38:26] thing we really talked about was just my body stuff and what do you want to tell you. No I think he's very aware of things like that where it's like that's just you being

[01:38:32] natural it's you doing you your muscle memory of how you feel when you operate a camera but he's so aware of what body language communicates and how it could like send the wrong message in terms of the story. What about the rehearsal to this movie.

[01:38:45] He like worked with him for like weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks if not months just having him walk around a room and being like we're going to work on when you were seven.

[01:38:56] Like walk like when you were seven think about when you were seven and just spending time like acting exercise into all of that so that for a movie where the kid has to go through all these

[01:39:04] different stages of like his body decomposing him gaining maturity survival when he's broken when he's stronger all these kinds of things that he gave them this sense of the history of how his body has changed and how his mind has changed over time.

[01:39:17] So then it just sort of became like a thing that was like an automatic response if he could be like at this moment you're sort of humble to how you felt when you were seven and he's like I spent four hours doing the seven thing right.

[01:39:29] You know yeah and I think it's a thing where like you know when actors talk about like oh I wrote like a character biography I wrote diary is my character you know so that way you have

[01:39:39] things to fall back on it like helps if you have sort of memories that you've created it's so much more productive when you have a director who's actually worked with you to

[01:39:47] be like let's act out things so you have a literal memory of what it felt like in your body to do these things even if it's a fake acting exercise. So if I say when you're seven you know what that

[01:39:58] feels like as opposed to like I wrote a fictional story right yeah good shit it's sure it's really real shit and because it's like what I know about directing actors is that do not use adjectives

[01:40:10] you do not talk about the film you're trying to make right you give them the information that they need to know right so you actually live in that moment what's like a bad adjective I don't know anything about directing if someone says like this is

[01:40:21] like your James Bond moment you know or this is kind of the moment where I want you to have like the hero shot where you become badass you know I'm like working a specific way but where

[01:40:28] you talk to them about like the end result of what you want the moment to convey in the film as opposed to what they need to be feeling right and sometimes even if it is a technical thing

[01:40:38] you're trying to get at it's so much more productive to find the way to trick them into getting there than to tell them like the end result is I want you to be orange

[01:40:45] you know yeah he said basically just he said he it's almost like he made a data bank of sense memory stuff right you know so he could and angley says here in this book is so next night next

[01:40:56] time he needs to get to that point he doesn't need to go through all the psychological memories yeah so it's conditioning like with a tiger on set kind of yeah and like especially if someone

[01:41:05] who's never been a movie before it just gives them like a really strong base yeah you know um my favorite part of this whole the shipper section is the flying fish lu Zealand that's great yes yes when lucia linda swimming through the water

[01:41:21] that's wonderful i mean i like the whale it's weird they cut out his camera because that was in the earlier do you remember you know what i'm talking about yes no lucian from the muppet show

[01:41:28] was in the early cut that we saw throwing the flying fish and then angley said it was like too distracting they also had him wearing a yann martel wig he was also played by toby

[01:41:38] he was played by tomya guyre in the end martel wig right but but it was lucia linda you guys were aware of the aspect like the yeah the aspect ratio stuff is so fun yeah what's up with that no i just

[01:41:48] love that and i think it's a thing that's under use where like he uses the sort of letter boxing to have the fish overlap over the sides of the frame which didn't the ghost busters movie a lot

[01:41:56] too it's just like it's basically popping in the frame but also did you look at that that uh talked to the french guy explaining the yes the moving so brian gardener who's this

[01:42:05] stereographer on this like the guy from coralline and i would say it's like the best third one of the like i'd say is like angley and then number two on this movie is brian gardener in terms of why

[01:42:14] this movie is amazing right he developed this thing that was a it's the the the proscenium frame is is basically on hinges on both sides and it's coming out like this it's coming out like

[01:42:25] that sometimes it bends out there's all this stuff where the screen is basically falling backwards and you don't notice it there's like a tremendous amount of stuff that is less showy than that very it's like working on full psychologically incredible just incredible yeah

[01:42:39] i mean he is one of the few guys and i said i felt this with billy lin uh as well in an episode we haven't recorded yet uh definitely haven't recorded yet that he like really understands

[01:42:50] using that stereostopic death as jesus christ stereoscopic depth as a part of the language you know like color or lighting or anything and that episode definitely isn't insanely long no it also doesn't definitely go off the rails in the last 30 minutes when we

[01:43:07] should have ended the episode correct and then we just start laughing constantly at god knows what did you guys talk about how his teeth are translucent and his skin is translucent when you see it in high frame rate we wouldn't have talked about that because we haven't recorded

[01:43:18] the episode yet but also i forgot about that you can see if you see it the right way you can see the blood moving through like the veins and the temple and it's like he's quite pale

[01:43:28] he's a pale man no offense to joe allwin but he's i think that's i think there's something there though eventually yeah yeah yeah there's something there life of pie guys so come on other is there

[01:43:41] anything else you want to talk about for the carnivorous island and the end of the movie there's sort of the big dream sequence not dream sequence but sort of like into his mind like

[01:43:51] that's what i'm saying another thing was like the describing this movie as a boy on a boat the tiger is a lie there's all these other things that happen because now it comes like a little bit

[01:43:59] of like a homerous odyssey thing where they're going through like individual trials there's no but like there's not a lot of challenges that are relating to the practical challenges of life on a boat with

[01:44:08] a tie because now he sort of fixed it now pretty quickly that gets solved right i mean there's the that with the whale disrupts them you know there are things you know obviously there's

[01:44:16] the moment where he lets the tiger back onto the boat is this sort of like humane slash like necessary act like even though the tiger is dangerous and hungry that's my favorite would have

[01:44:29] eaten piece of ritchard parker acting the whole movie is when he's just so sort of pathetic like that's what it looks like when you yeah your cat their mouth looks exactly like that i love that

[01:44:41] but then yeah i mean he he gets to this island little pencil little pencil you like the little pencil pencil gets oh i love that oh yeah the last time you see him writing you can't even see

[01:44:51] the lead it's like so tiny that he's still scratching out and they use the the tally marks on the side of the boat really well as a way to not have to like tell you how much time it's been but every

[01:45:01] time they cut you see it again you're just like jesus fucking christ did you read the section of stuff i said that was actually about like the board that my mom had on this no i can't imagine

[01:45:09] how okay so basically this and this is the work that i think like my mom was the script supervisor on this but i think that like i recently got into a bind on a project where i was asking for them

[01:45:17] to hire a script supervisor and they were just like what you're describing is not a script supervisor and eventually they just got me a hired another director to be my assistant

[01:45:25] and it was like okay that's like what my mom does basically and so they had this 20 foot board that was basically like they were charting like the spiritual journey yes like with metrics

[01:45:38] they were charting how much pie is becoming a tiger like um just a tremendous there everything in this his physical states are so different all of that stuff basically they were like we are

[01:45:49] terrified of this thing not moving yeah everything needs to be changing there has to be progression and what they would do is they charted on this big board and whenever they would see dead spots

[01:45:57] yeah they would go okay now we got to put some dynamics in there yeah and so it's always like changing color path like it's there's just a lot of for a movie about just floating rudderlessly

[01:46:07] literally um sure there's a tremendous amount of like dynamic uh kind of action going on like on like uh 13 different levels the thing i just might really standing out to me watching it without

[01:46:17] the vfx was that like even without the elements even in this like environment that is clearly artificial you're buying into it because he changes the storytelling language for each little section so much yeah that it doesn't become monotonous it doesn't just become like

[01:46:35] here's a kid in the middle of the frame yeah that's that's surrounded by water when i saw this movie that is how i felt about the movie you thought it got repetitive i thought i found it

[01:46:44] boring especially once he was on the boat uh i think i was uninterested in 3d at the time i think i was sick of 3d yeah because it's 2011 right so we're like two years into 3d this is like

[01:46:59] well because there was the run for like a couple years where there's that weird thing where like four consecutive best cinematography oscars were won by 3d films is that right four avatar life of pie hugo and gravity but you're missing 2010 okay so yeah but something like that

[01:47:16] four out of five consecutive years are won by it and it felt like once a year a major director steps up to the plate it feels like the general public is starting to sour on 3d but once a year

[01:47:25] someone steps up and it becomes an event and even if you think you don't like 3d you have to see gravity in 3d you have to see life of pie in 3d yeah if you go performed worse out of those

[01:47:36] but it was obviously very well regarded yeah and then then that kind of ends like then it stops being like major filmmakers are going to try to make their 3d movie like abruptly in a really

[01:47:48] kind of interesting way because it was like proven that on average 3d movies weren't performing as well but if a major person made one that was like oh this is intrinsically tied to the

[01:47:58] storytelling and they've done the research to make the tech work it would always do well i'm trying to find the last cinematography movie that was even of like a movie that was even available

[01:48:07] in 3d right mad max wasn't right it was okay so mad man um anyway uh i didn't like this movie i now remember that i was going through an insane uh like end of relationship close to breakup

[01:48:22] like time then this is like right before we met yes we became friends because we are both not doing well correct and perhaps that influenced my like somewhat sort of sour opinion this week

[01:48:33] when i watch it now is very taken with it and fond of it like maybe not like my favorite angli but like your exit the time also was a bencalt tiger but this film is a little triggering

[01:48:43] for you i know that's true used to live in a little boat did that did that scene though where he said i'm you've taken you've taken my family you've taken everything what i surrender

[01:48:51] what else do you want did that resonate with you at them only in your life because very much so yeah i mean that's basically word for word of conversation no yeah no you know i mean

[01:48:59] the guy and i remember in the q&a too just being like uh he asked like he asked me directly like is this thing working for you and i said like after that scene like i'm i'm just i'm just the greatest

[01:49:09] movie ever you know like i just like yeah you like full stop love this movie i think david and i are in similar places where i like like it i would say like it okay if you've ever had the

[01:49:17] experience of going seeing your like friends indie band play show and you're like i just like feel so good that they're on stage and they seem really confident like all this it's like imagine

[01:49:26] going and seeing your friend's band and the band is life of pie sure you know i love this movie it's like so proud of these and a thing you told me is like you know speaking to people who are working

[01:49:35] on the film and everything it was constantly like i don't know if we're gonna fucking pull this off yeah we might have overreached sure already to go story to tell what happened with billy

[01:49:44] lin yes you know billy lin is like an overreach which i think definitely gave him the courage to think that it was worth trying billy lin when he's like 10 years ahead of anyone realistically

[01:49:54] attempting that um yeah so he gets on the carnivorous island that's cool that's just like a dnd adventure yeah because it kind of feels like maybe like problem solved in the book too yeah but also i just

[01:50:06] like that idea of like oh you've reached paradise and like it's filled with tamons it's filled with your hands for days but just like that you know like the classic stranded man it would be

[01:50:17] like oh you see a mirage and it's not there right right you know but like this is like no it's there there's a tooth wrapped up is that the beef from blare witch project yes it definitely is weird

[01:50:26] right highest paid yeah wait what what do you i miss open up a like the big scary nothing scary happens in that movie except for they open up a like a package with the scariest part of the

[01:50:37] Blair witch project is well apart from the ending is that like that weird right package of goo and tooth and it's the same tooth it's they paid the tooth 2.5 tooth gets a width in this movie i don't

[01:50:50] know if you know it's a tooth gets the width with tooth i hope it's fallen world sidebar for one second please the moment that i really i have not i really started to like that movie is when i

[01:50:58] realized that that t-rex that was in the back of the truck drug and i like and i ambient or whatever was the same t-rex that was chasing the jeep in the first movie and i think that

[01:51:07] bronosaurus that dies is like the first i think that those are arcs over movies that's what they're suggesting specific dinosaurs i think they're going there the captain is very into that he talks about Jurassic world being unforgiven for the t-rex oh really and that is all i will

[01:51:25] say about that did you hear the way i just said really like yes dismayed that is all i will say about that okay um i i like will watch Jurassic world fallen kingdom at some point you should

[01:51:38] yeah i'm more into it when people describe it that's kind of how i felt watching it i do like the first scene though and i like some of the end yeah i don't know the last three minutes is pretty

[01:51:49] cool yeah but well we could talk about it but not today we're not talking about that today today so he gets off the connevere island but pretty quickly after that he ends up on

[01:51:59] good normal safe island he does that's the thing is like you're like oh man like he came so close and then it's like well no actually five minutes later in the way he makes like and

[01:52:07] it's like i think it's just that idea of we've reached the end of the story right we've reached the plausibility breaking point he's reached his journey his relationship about that to the Japanese people uh the Japanese insurance agents they're like a carnivorous yeah come on what are you

[01:52:21] talking about yeah Jesus Christ doesn't this represent some kind of like you know like the the dream sequence he has in like passion of the christry like imagines getting off it's like it's the last thing where you almost get distracted from right like it's like oh it's

[01:52:34] it's a trap right he almost doesn't make it yeah he almost falls prey so comes at the last possible moment right right right yeah yeah that makes sense yeah i also always get really grossed out when

[01:52:44] he eats that like root you know like vegetables looks gross yeah that's i love the philosophy and pain on the you know he that richard parker just walks off uh yeah that that hits me really

[01:52:57] it does and and the uh um Sharma plays it so well yes you know that the emotion like the crying like it's actually hard to do that right you're like right it's just like a fucking tiger he doesn't

[01:53:09] have any relationship to me he doesn't think about like man we went through this crazy fucking thing together but then i suppose there's metaphorical import to like you know it's like

[01:53:17] his uh he doesn't need a part of him is gone right yeah i they put a lot of stress in the making of book on that this very last shot yeah before it goes to the credits and they're like

[01:53:27] pay attention to see what it is and they really like cue it as like decipher this uh i've i've done what i think i can do it's basically like a you know vertigo type thing where it

[01:53:36] extends and then the color drains from it yeah and they're like what is that shot and it basically is him passing out yeah like the movie ends when he like the the spirit animal he's had to create

[01:53:47] to survive he no longer needs it it disappears and he goes unconscious right so that's you know we've been talking around it but the twist of this movie is well we kind of talked about it yeah

[01:53:57] it's it's essentially a disassociative episode right like he creates an alternate identity to be able to win his own survival yeah it's a horror fine traumatic means right right and it's much like

[01:54:11] i guess there's this you can draw this idea that like it's kind of like the stories of religion you know like because there's those early scenes where he's with the priest where he's like

[01:54:21] but why would god send his son and have him suffer for it like that just seems mean yeah and all that you know like where he's like what is this story you're telling me it seems

[01:54:32] so impossible to empathize with or what it you know well and what's interesting about to me is that when he tells the story it's so much about that initial incident with

[01:54:42] the cook and the sailor right and his mother which is why i asked if it's longer in the book with the animals because what happens with the animals it's just like a pretty fast like two

[01:54:50] minutes sort of sequence right yeah and here it's clear when it tells the story that like that was the real thing and then he doesn't even really tell them about the survival after that

[01:54:58] in the same kind of way you know so this whole rest of the journey that we've been watching is him just fucking coming to terms with what he's done less than the actual act you know

[01:55:08] when i was reading this breakdown that my college professor scott higgins hi katie um was uh basically breaking down like all the stereoscopic kind of things that they're doing and they basically said in that last scene where he's giving the kind of confession to the

[01:55:21] auditors basically or the investigators it is like that scene in fallout where the walls fall backwards yeah and and where it's just framed on tom cruise and you feel that like vertigo thing basically as this is going on they're taking that animated like they have a proscenium that

[01:55:36] they can angle right and they drop it backwards and then extend like they're doing all this crazy so the room sort of gets wider and deeper and their faces come more and more forward

[01:55:46] is that you basically are falling up and towards the screen you get a kind of like a you know like a flight of passage kind of like yeah out of body experience uh that's crazy there's a lot of

[01:55:56] cool i think this is like worth watching in 3d yeah i think i'm gonna buy the 3d since i have the last 3d i spent the summer uh up at like i was up at living at dug trumbles

[01:56:06] house and he has a great 3d tv and i have to say most of this this was the movie like true lies or something where it's like every day at lunch he had all these 3d blu rays and we would just always

[01:56:16] watch like let's just watch this like 25 minutes of life of pie with our glasses on let's watch this you know and and just kind of skip around in the movie it's really really fun to watch that way

[01:56:26] and i find also like 3d movies are often better on smaller screens you can kind of get a better sense of what they're doing i really like 3d i know you do it david i don't hate it i just

[01:56:35] have no interest you go like you do the thing where you throw your arms up i do that a lot like the the big air puppet outside a huge car dealership that's sort of the same as movies

[01:56:45] it rarely does much for me it gives me a headache you just i i spent so much of my experience being like okay i have to hold my head just like this now everything looks good i 3d is good with really

[01:56:57] expensive glasses and it's terrible with 3d real d glasses which is what they give you i just get bummed out that i feel like the lazy 3d the sort of cash and post conversions and that's sort of

[01:57:09] kind of crazed hunger to cash in post avatar it can be good yeah because i do like the the sort of like what we're talking about of like once or twice a year here's a serious director using it

[01:57:19] in a very pointed way and i feel like the glut of sort of just like the sloppy post conversions has soured people on it so much that you don't have people actually like trying to do something

[01:57:29] pointed with it using it as a thematic tool i'm also like like i say it just like doesn't like i say in the billy lin episode i like the window i'm trying to watch the move

[01:57:39] like i like looking at a frame like that's what i like about cinema i'll tell you what i like about 3d okay i like that i is it that like the images sort of like come out of the screen yeah that was

[01:57:49] very concise what i like about it is i don't think it actually reflects reality i like the stylization of it yeah you know like watching a 3d movie for me feels like watching a musical

[01:58:01] david's doing the arm thing again where it's just like this is just like an expressionistic tactic rather than breaking into song yes it's like they're using the force of these objects in

[01:58:11] relation to each other to make you feel things and here's the acting part of the movie has to be 3d yeah and i angly figured this out it's like okay you gotta go back to that scene in ponder cherry

[01:58:19] when there when you go from the comic book insert they get so crazy looking and then it cuts the shot of someone just like putting a candle on the water that candle moves out the whole

[01:58:28] background's out of focus and you realize it's actually like a four thousand person right thing that they did and then and and like about the movie right now they were talking about shooting that

[01:58:36] scene they said those thought the entire crew was on set lighting candles and it's just like there was the moment where they all just bonded forever as a unit i just think like ripples

[01:58:46] in 3d of the water will never stop being captivating right okay here's what he says vision sleeps floating on the shortlist cosmic ocean and we are the stuff of his dreaming and then he just stops and says spectacle that's cool you know any and and the dad says

[01:59:02] don't let these stories in pretty lights fool you boys religion is darkness and i think this movie is like using 3d and spectacle to kind of like it's like a church you go into this

[01:59:13] movie and it is a it is a it's a spiritual experience right and it's he's he's not sure whether that's safe or not and it's so he's afraid of spiritual experiences that give meaning to chaos

[01:59:26] and so the thing needs to have so many exploding socks and so much just kind of like adorn adornment to it because as it's about the danger of maybe succumbing to the believing in the in the

[01:59:40] really like baroque version of what happened also that sort of stylization and technological like emersment is like getting you into the story in the same way that rafes ball is like fully just head in listening to every single detail of this thing i when i'm about race

[01:59:55] false characters race fall keeps trying he's too he's too greedy you know i think i think that scene where he reaches for the bread on the table and then sees that he's praying and gets kind of

[02:00:03] ashamed and then your front con that line ring goes yeah let's see it's like fantastic yeah like that's like a hinge point for the movie and what i do like about race falls characters he's like

[02:00:13] a gluttonous like white bastard who's just like give me give me the payoff giving the payoff like i'm here to extract it well and also when he and then he eventually learns to like stop asking

[02:00:23] questions and he realizes like uh that story will come as it comes like yeah because when he first mentions the tiger he's like oh yeah no there was a tiger you know um but there's also that scene

[02:00:34] very early on where he's like i really liked your first book and he's like oh thank you i've been writing the second one oh is it set in ponditry is that where you're there no it's set in

[02:00:41] portugal it's just cheaper in ponditry and he goes like oh like and you can tell like he's got a judgment yeah about him but he just sort of like lets it simmer and then he doesn't say anything which i

[02:00:52] remember in the maguire version him being like fully sold on the wonder of the story from the get go like he was playing it much more like oh my god this is amazing what great luck that i've met this

[02:01:02] guy and it felt like they were trying to set him up as more of a traditional like in a weird way audience surrogate like you're hearing the story through him whereas like the race ball

[02:01:11] stuff in this is still at a distance where you're watching how the guy processed the story rather than hearing the story through him yeah yeah in the book which i think is smarter in the book i

[02:01:19] think i remember it being more they're more fighting about religion like it's more of like an argument physically yeah they physically fight frozen through a window yeah and it's crazy and then there's like a big like parkour scene yeah where they're like chasing each other around

[02:01:33] your mouth oh my god david through his headphones he broke them and he's now setting the studio on fire oh it was right there yeah it was right there it was right there um but you know right

[02:01:47] so there's like a little more sense of like when he says like and so it goes with god you're like oh he's really like convinced him or made a profound argument that he understands is profound

[02:01:57] so the argument uh with people i guess who prefer the book to this is that the book is more ambiguous and sort of putting you in the position of like which story would you

[02:02:08] rather believe whereas the movie it feels like just because i think it's the nature of having people act these things feels a lot more weighted towards this is a coping mechanism yeah because

[02:02:19] you have irfan khan and you have sarah charma like talking these stories through and then the choices they made as actors make it seem like they're dealing with a tremendous amount of trauma sure yeah

[02:02:32] i i think my big like revelation in seven morning as well as i was walking around my neighborhood was i was like okay so the cool thing about this film is it's like a big tent film

[02:02:41] and that's why it works as a four quadrant hit is because you can actually go in and have different experiences yes you know and and it's rated pg yeah which is crazy yeah and and instead of like doing

[02:02:51] what most four quadrant films do where they say like let's hem in this let's hem in that let's like not offend as many people as possible this one goes like you can have radically like if

[02:03:00] you believe in god this film goes really hard for you if you're like raised like a violent atheist like i am you watch the film and you go okay so this is cool that they tricked religious

[02:03:10] people into watching this and then this morning i realized anglic believes in god yes for sure yeah 100 and i got tricked yeah you know what i mean this is not like i am an atheist who was tricked

[02:03:22] into thinking that this movie was on my side he also like talks about that like his sense of god is very much just the idea of there being like a power that's tying things together

[02:03:31] you know rather than like following a certain like kind of narrative of like the religious trials of like development of man and things like that but i mean just in the process of when they

[02:03:42] describe him making this film like he was being guided you know there's a lot of stuff where it's like there was a symbol basically on the tiger's head like he cast the tiger because there was

[02:03:51] like a sign on his head and there's like all these photos of them like praying on set and and you know it's like it's really and when he describes like his process of directing it's

[02:04:02] much more like just paying attention to the world yeah and kind of trusting the hand of fate yes you know uh definitely uh as you said a weird four quadrant hit very much so do you want to

[02:04:13] play the box yeah because there were you read a lot of press before the movie came out everyone was like that thing's gonna fucking flop like even if it does okay it was so expensive they're

[02:04:22] releasing Thanksgiving and then like Hurricane Sandy happened and people were like that's right it's a fucking storm movie you know yeah like uh but they released a trailer that was just

[02:04:33] very much sort of like a showcase reel like they'd be like now an exclusive look at life of pie and it was i think the first section i'm trying to remember what it was they did one of

[02:04:42] those things where before 3d movies they released like an excerpt almost like maybe it was the the dark night thing before i and led to be part of the shipwreck or something i vaguely

[02:04:51] remember that i think it might have been the sequence with the flying fish that sounds positive that sounds very plausible yeah it also premiered at the new york film festival and like got

[02:04:59] good reviews and that was like a couple months before it came out so there was like you know but some healthy buzz very much a movie that felt like it could have landed in the middle in

[02:05:06] terms of not getting rave reviews not doing great box office landed weirdly on a static ends of both Thanksgiving weekend yeah 2012 okay number one is the fifth inner franchise and final is it Twilight break and dawn part two

[02:05:24] which i think we may have discussed in a box office game before which is also the best in its second weekend one day we'll we'll really hash it out about the twilight movies

[02:05:34] yes we will uh number two is all in its third weekend it's made two hundred and twenty one million dollars it's really it's the most it's a most astonishing hit within a very successful

[02:05:49] franchise so it's the highest grossing i believe so i don't believe so i know so oh is it a skyfall skyfall yeah the 23rd Bond movie i believe foreign away the biggest

[02:06:03] yeah yeah like one of those things were bond had always done well there was a ceiling though to have made a billion dollars and like that was like oh what like that doesn't usually yeah also known

[02:06:13] as jellyfish reflection to me it's all a big year for like like jellyfish in movies love those moon jellies because everyone got scared off after seven pounds and then this year like angly Sam Mendes are like i'm bringing jellyfish back speaking seven pounds the after earth

[02:06:27] Gemini man comparison is going to be so fantastic because instead of making jaden into little will smith it's little will smith it's will smith fighting will will smith and it's i'm so excited i hope

[02:06:38] they draw something like the fresh friends i hope it's good it's gonna be a me are you i mean here's the thing i would say as like being a kid that grew up as like a family friend of angly

[02:06:46] every single time he's decided to make a film it's been baffling you know i mean it's always like you're like what really my mom works on ice storm and then it's like where's

[02:06:54] what's ang doing so ang is making a kung fu movie yeah okay all right like ang's making hulk okay okay it's a it's a cowboy it's a gay cowboy right i think these all sound banana it's a movie

[02:07:06] you sound like lateral moves yeah i'm gonna be about someone having a panic attack in the middle of a destiny destiny's child this is insane yeah so it's like when i hear like okay it's like

[02:07:14] it's a will smith film where it's like basically looper yeah right right you know except he's playing both parts but i think the idea that's so amazing about it is just that like uh

[02:07:23] like i the will smith as a young man did not get those opportunities to like give like a phenomenal performance sure and told and and and also here okay my big theory is that uh

[02:07:34] all this stuff that will smith has been doing on instagram is similar to what he did with this actor where he's becoming young again actually through sense memory will smith don't you think will smith on instagram has been adorable because he's young again interesting train

[02:07:48] himself to be young again and that's what we're seeing worse and it's just the energy is going into this movie yeah and i'll say i also it's the first time will smith's working with a really

[02:07:57] big important smart director and i'll look in a while it's like michael man arguably right i want to look at his filmography just to make sure i'm not like dissing someone but like

[02:08:06] any you know like no offense to david air sure or akiva goldsman right but like i mean do you count m night shamalan because if not at that point he's like that's a bronze star but also

[02:08:20] like if not you kind of got to go back to basically like either alex pro yes if you if you buy that or you know michael man what were you gonna say oh i just think that the you know uh m night

[02:08:33] shamalan coming off of like both of these things i think like they're signing on to will smith projects like will smith generated which finds is very interesting and makes sense in like a

[02:08:43] post billy lin climate but it's i i'm i'm very curious to see what that movie looks like very but i do i mean what you were saying about like every project he signs on to sounding like

[02:08:55] just completely confusing i've been watching uh these movies a lot of them with the lady i've been dating humble bragg and uh like once every 20 minutes i should have said humble bragg

[02:09:07] i'm calling my own humble no you say it say it again i've been watching a lot of these movies with the lady that happened to me humble bragg humble bragg fucking humble bragg he roasts

[02:09:17] me so much for dairy i'm very proud of you actually i think this is great stuff thank you but she like every 20 minutes during whatever movie we're watching will just go like wait a second angley's career is fucking crazy sure like she just in response to random scenes

[02:09:32] for movies will be like how is this the same guy that made that thing it's true especially when you watch them all at once this is gonna really fun mini series for that exactly remind

[02:09:39] me what the one before this is and the one after this is and she just goes like that's insane it's just why i wanted to do him because it's that thing of like the genres which that they toggle so

[02:09:48] crazily right yeah like i was talking about hulk and she was like so what does he make after hulk and i'm like broke back and she's like what he made before that i was like crouching tiger

[02:09:57] and i honestly think it's like there's a lot of directors it's like you like the verner herzeg model where you're like look at that thing up on the mountain i'm going to go run

[02:10:04] up there as fast as i can and then i will prove to you that life can be like this yeah that is not what he does he's not a crazy he's not like an arrogant person i think he's actually

[02:10:11] a person who is just reacting to the world yeah taking his cues from it and like when if i talked to him on the set of billy linn about what he's doing i genuinely get the impression

[02:10:20] that it's his understanding that this was the only rational path forward seriously but that's that's part of his but that's why it's ill as an artist right is that he's resolute about

[02:10:29] the things he does and also it's like if you read the the stuff i sent you about like the backstory of him actually the whole thing of like oh he wanted to be an actor right but it was like

[02:10:39] it's many steps before that it's like he basically was mickey from the ice storm right way he describes himself as a kid just like he's like i was spaced out i was brooding my entire childhood only

[02:10:48] went to art school because he couldn't get into any other couldn't get into the military failed the military test right and then got sent to the art academy which is basically like lawariet high school it's just like hide these kids right you know right so they don't get

[02:10:59] beat up but he was just sort of guided through the universe yeah and then in that is like can't do theater stuff because it's so verbal yeah and then get goes to film school and goes this is bullshit

[02:11:09] like i've fucked up my life and then he realizes that on his first sight and sound thing people are listening to him for the first time in his life yeah and he said that i was actually

[02:11:17] the first time that people listen and he said i did it because it was really easy and because people listened to me for the first time and i've been directing ever since it's crazy you know and

[02:11:25] i honestly think this his career is the he's yeah it's already seems very but it's like this was the as as wild and as ambitious as these films are i think they're all him being like i think this

[02:11:38] is the path of least resistance yes and i'm a good responsible person like this is this was my only choice that's what feels crazy about them is like his filmography if you look at it i think

[02:11:49] we've said this before is it feels like he's like a 1940s studio system guy where they're like here's the new movie we're signing you like it looks like the filmography of a guy who doesn't

[02:11:57] choose what films he makes because they're so very and all over the place that's like howard hox now you got to do a screwball now you got to do a western you know except it's very deliberate

[02:12:08] and it's just him oscillating between all these weird different modes so number three wow the box office is no it's fine i want i want to do i thought it'd be funny

[02:12:18] is one of the other best picture nominees we already discussed it arga nope argo is number ten uh silver linings playbook nope silver linings playbook is number nine they're all in there lincoln oh lincoln oh blade blink what's it up to with this 62 million in three weeks it's

[02:12:36] going to make another growing 120 million dollars another avie koffman masterpiece now life of pie is casting life of pie is number five with only 30 million in its opening weekend yeah i mean but

[02:12:48] thanksgiving is one of those weekends where you can have like multiple thumbs open well yeah but number four also opening this weekend because even after that weekend that was not that would not

[02:12:58] have given fox confidence they were going to make a profit on this film uh yeah i don't know yeah um it's an animated film number four uh is it hotel transylvania correct incorrect what incorrect uh is it wreck it ralph nope that's number six is it a dreamworks

[02:13:23] yes it is a dream work but you hesitated so it wasn't an obvious dream i barely remember the existence of this movie i feel like you have some take where you're like no it's not bad

[02:13:33] oh oh yeah this is the best dreamworks movie the last 10 years god wait rise of the guardians yeah you think this is good yeah fox it's an okay talk about an unfilmable concept they can't show

[02:13:46] it's a movie about owls that tear each other's body thinking that's legend of the guardian what am i saying owls of gahool directed by zack snider this is legend of the guardians

[02:13:56] no that's legend of the garden oh this is rise of the garden this is rise the garden it's clearly excuse me excuse rise at the guardians is the one we're like santa and like hitler unite or whatever i don't it's the avengers of of children's imagination it's

[02:14:11] aster bunny sand man fucking tooth fairy desecration russian mafia santa claus played by alex baldwin it fucking rules chris pine is jack frost he's very handsome boy and they fight nightmares well it's an elegant movie based off a william joy story i can't share this i'm good

[02:14:31] it made 32 million dollars at the box office underperforming and it's a crime it made 300 million dollars worldwide should have made 300 billion dollars worldwide that'd be a lot i insist that everyone rent rise of the guardians now uh you've also got uh red dawn the remake of red

[02:14:54] dawn doesn't exist never happened really doesn't exist you know that movie was made with china as the enemy rather than russia and then the chinese box office grew so much that they digitally changed it to north korea i didn't know do you know about what happened to ghost

[02:15:07] busters answer the call no because uh uh gocers are worship ancestor worship ghosts are illegal in china can you imagine all four of those characters be like we're gonna beat up your grandma yeah they are afraid of some ghosts and the people's mainland of china taken to people's

[02:15:24] mainland of china jesus christ yeah taken to one of the greatest premises in one of the most mediocre movie okay that's that's the box office it did very well as we said do you remember the premise

[02:15:33] of taken to no oh it's that all the people he killed and taken one are mad at him all the henchmen all the henchmen were related to one guy who's like he killed all of my nephews all

[02:15:45] 200 nephews and now i gotta get my revenge it's one of the most audacious openings to a movie he's fleeting through photos of his family and killed by brian mills killed by brian mills he's throwing

[02:15:57] them all into a mass grave and he went i will find this man and then it cuts to the fucking liam nissan yelling at a car wash attendant all right well uh this is our five hour episode on

[02:16:09] life of pie we're done yeah i mean i don't know ray what else do you have any final thoughts what else do you want to say before we uh head off into the sunset like richard parker without looking back

[02:16:21] i'm just so honored to be a part of this this show has been incredibly incredibly important to me for the last like uh two years and then when we were seeing was it rogue one i remember you telling

[02:16:30] me how ray had just talked to you about how much he loved the show remember that yes and i was like in a rush and i was like what the fuck you i don't know who you're talking about right

[02:16:38] now and was very short with you you had said a very nice thing to me about the show and i related to david and david was angry that his girlfriend humble brag was late to the movie yes i even

[02:16:47] though we had reserve seats we had reserved you were very stressed out i was very stressed out about something and i didn't know who you were talking about i was like huh but um that has

[02:16:54] always stuck with me i've been a massive massive fan of ray's work for a very very long time i never told you this oh but i uh literally wrote a paper on you in film school on your short

[02:17:07] film death at ten minutes wow yeah i don't think it was very good uh it was talking about uh it wasn't in a film class it was like talking about like artistic inspiration wow truly um and we and we

[02:17:22] knew the same people didn't know each other for years and years and years and then we sort of became friends through you listening to the podcast we saw ally together right right

[02:17:31] which fox that's a good movie ally fox i'd i'd watch allied again for this podcast and see what i think about it i'll tell you what i'll tell you what last time i saw ally donald trump had been

[02:17:42] elected the day before not good so that may have colored my opinion of it very bad don't do i mean my my my take on allied is that i really liked the the desert stuff like i like that and then

[02:17:53] it was the england stuff where it lost me but i love all of it um ray thanks for being in his hands thank you so much uh ben uh it's homeless ben and going through some stuff through some

[02:18:06] stuff we and we love him ben sort of in the middle of his life boat in the middle of the ocean right now oh for sure yeah uh and he's begging for a tiger to jump in with him please come on come at me

[02:18:21] tigers ben needs a company right now if you need to stay in my place i actually have some room right now for real it's an option okay we'll talk off like yeah this you're actually gonna have a

[02:18:32] conversation about this off my immediately considered yeah thank you very much for listening please remember to break review subscribe thanks dan for good up for social media job bow and power rounds for our artwork lame uncounted for our theme song go to blankies dot red

[02:18:45] that come for some real nerdy shits and as always uh truly feel free to tweet at ben if you have a suggestion of where he's left hey ben uh also we're uh sponsored today by a typeset in the

[02:19:01] future which is a book coming out from abram's books that's uh by blogger and designer dav addy and it invites like sci-fi movie fans on a journey through genre defining classics you know your 2001 your star trek your alien your blade runner these great sci-fi movies they look

[02:19:18] at how these movies use bit me creative visions of the future through typography and design so you know you can see all these cool film stills these concept arts these type specimens and then

[02:19:32] they got interviews with people like paul verhoeven for the subject of a blank check mini series pod chip casters so it's very geeky it's very it's honestly very david sims it's fonts and title cards and stuff like that in sci-fi movies it's on sale november 6th

[02:19:52] from abram's books