Oldboy with Alison Willmore

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

[00:00:19] If they had told me this podcast was going to be 15 years long, would it have been easier to endure? That's funny. Thank you. This episode is gonna be 15 years long. I'm calling it right now. Yes, we have to do the kind of experiential. No.

[00:00:36] People love it when we do. No. Remember in the Prestige episode? We can check in with this guest. When my twin subbed in for a second. Oh yeah, I definitely remember that. Seven years ago. It would likely bring a hammer. Which is so disappointing.

[00:00:55] We're trying all these things here. We're trying to get in. Inception we did podcast in a podcast. 127 hours, we were 127 hours long and that worked out really well. And so I'm saying let's just do as long as we can get dumplings. Yes. Oh yeah, right.

[00:01:08] We will have dumplings delivered every day. That would be nice. Yeah. No, we can check in 15 years later. Those like Richard Linklater style. So what's that? Let me do the math. 2038. Oh yeah. So we'll meet back here. Yeah. Or like the Wet Hot American Summer. Right.

[00:01:27] I'm busy that morning, but afternoon I could do. So rather than do a 15 year long podcast, we do a podcast. Then 15 years later we come back to and go pretty good. Pretty good app. What are you doing? David's his new favorite bit of prop comedy.

[00:01:41] Playing with the big tape measure. He likes the big tape measure. This is set up in a later episode. Okay. All right. That's a tease. This is a terrible beginning to a big episode about a big movie from our big director. 15 year long podcast.

[00:01:55] This is Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David. This is a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want.

[00:02:07] Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce baby. It's a mini series on the films of Park Chan-wook and it's called I'm a Podcast But That's Okay. That's right. That's right jerks. It's not called Podboy. No. You keep calling them jerks. We put the poll up on Twitter.

[00:02:26] Yeah. Right. And they voted against this and we decided to choose. We decided against their choice. Yeah. We're teaching them a lesson. They chose sympathy for Mr. Podcast and we decided that was boring. And we had no sympathy for them. Fuck off. Right. All right. All right. Yep.

[00:02:45] Today we're talking about Oldboy, his most famous film. Is that still true? Probably. I think it has to be. The Handmaiden probably the only challenger I would say. I don't think Handmaiden comes anywhere close to this in terms of legacy. I agree. I agree. Yeah.

[00:02:57] I don't know if you've heard of his film. I just think he will kind of always be the Oldboy guy. And this was a film that changed things. Yes. That's hard to make one of those. Yeah. And it's also like so much of its era.

[00:03:08] I feel like it's a kind of era defining. Yes, it is. This is sort of like the graduates for like modern South Korean cinema. You know where you're like, well, that's like an inflection point. I think it's just also a big movie for extreme cinema in general. Yes.

[00:03:25] Or Western audiences being exposed to extreme cinema. I think this movie crossed over more than most films of the 2000s did into the United States. Most films? You mean like foreign films? Foreign language films. Yeah. Not immediately, but I just think this movie just kept fucking growing.

[00:03:46] Also like introduced people. I think it was people's introduction. A lot of people to South Korean cinema as an idea. What's going on here? And especially like then it kind of the whole scene got associated with being like gnarly, extreme stuff. Absolutely. Yeah, that is all true.

[00:04:01] It's like did it make a lot of money in America? Like in theaters? Not at all. No, no, no. I feel like it was huge on DVD. Exactly. It just had this kind of like long reputation or like college kids or whatever. You know, all that.

[00:04:17] Yeah, you were in the know if you were like a suburban teen who became a college kid. Like you would show off your sophistication with like, well, old boy. Also so much of, you know, the fact that this movie is so fucked up. It is though.

[00:04:33] No, it is. I'm not saying it. I'm not mocking it. No, but we were kind of like that in 2005, I feel like. And now I'm watching it and I'm like, good lord, this is so fucked up.

[00:04:44] I think this movie's legacy for a while was like someone has the DVD in their dorm room and they're like, have you fucking seen this? Like people want to show it to friends to see their reaction to it in a way that was more

[00:04:54] of a like VHS era horror thing, I think. Where it's like, oh, you've never seen Cannibal Holocaust? I gotta show you this fucked up thing. Right. And then you could kind of progress from there if like old boy was like the entry level and

[00:05:06] then you could get into like Flowers of Flesh and Blood and like all that kind of like the stuff that was like even more esoteric. The Tartan extreme era. Thank you. That's the big. I tried so hard. Yeah, so hard to get a job at Tartan.

[00:05:18] Oh, to get a job doing what? When I was right out of college. Yes. It was like my number one, like I want to work at Tartan. Doing what? Like marketing or like whatever. Just anything. You were like, just take me in. Entry level job.

[00:05:31] I had an interview there and I think, you know, they appreciated my enthusiasm and eventually we're just sort of like this kid does, has no work experience. Like really? Can we just say that extreme was a masterstroke for those who don't know Tartan? Distribution, home media company.

[00:05:48] But they started putting out certain titles under the Tartan extreme label. And I feel like old boy having that Tartan extreme and big letters on top made people go what? So what else? Right? Yeah.

[00:06:02] And then it was sort of like anything else with the Tartan extreme on top was like, well, maybe it's like old boy. And I do think that branding alone being tied to this movie exposed a lot of people to a lot of films they wouldn't watch otherwise. 100%.

[00:06:16] Very, very cool. And obviously they did Battle Royale as well, which I feel like is the other early 2000s piece of Asian cinema. But it's earlier than this. It's like 2001 maybe? I think so. 2000, 2001. Audition was like, I think. I think they might have. Battle Royale is 2000.

[00:06:34] I think Audition is 2001. No, 99. Sorry. Thank you. I saw Audition recently. I mean, obviously I say these are the numbers on them, but like they came to the West a little later usually.

[00:06:46] But I think old boy is benefiting from a couple years of tape trading of Battle Royale and Audition. But I do also think, you know, like, so you guys know about Japanese cinema? Sure. You know about Hong Kong Kung Fu movies? Yeah.

[00:07:02] But like, do you know about Korean movies? What are they doing in Korea? Like, wow. Yeah. But I think there was that thing of like, you know, yes, coming from different countries, but those couple of movies we just listed circulating with like intense film bros. Right.

[00:07:18] And then also because of like Tartan Extreme, I think a lot of them ended up at your like, you know, Hollywood video and like those were standards in the international section. And so if you were like looking for something that felt really provocative, right, really

[00:07:30] inflammatory, you could go find them at like most like chain places. You know, they were accessible. Yes. Sometimes in slightly cut down versions. Sure. I do feel like you look at home video releases and you're like, oh, there was like a blockbuster

[00:07:43] version of Old Boy, you know, like that era still where certain chains would demand versions just for them. But they were also like they just cared so much less about international stuff, which was like the kind of secret of all of those chains. Right.

[00:07:57] Like if it was not rated in the first place, then they're like not really paying attention. Yeah. Yeah. Old Boy. Old Boy. Our guest today, of course, from Vulture, from the Prestige episode where the world's greatest bit happened. And the Drinkman woman. Yeah. Yeah. We did that.

[00:08:12] I don't think we did any bits in that, though. No. That's a great movie. It is. Is there another one? Because we did realize, oh, it's been a stupid amount of time since we had Allison on. Allison Wolmer is our guest. No, those are Allison's two episodes.

[00:08:25] That's embarrassing. You're back. Embarrassing. Yes. From outer space. From outer space. Nice to see you. We see each other all the time. All the time. But I know that's not a bad thing. I love to see Allison. I see Allison sometimes, too. Sure. That's true.

[00:08:39] We did the film spotting show together. That's it. Our last hang was like backstage somewhere. At the Bell House or something? There's no hang like a backstage hang. Nothing like that green room at the Bell House. Yeah. They always have those tortilla chips. Yeah. Got some hummus.

[00:08:49] Very nice. Right. There's the, there's the, there's the, there's the, there's the, there's the, there's the They always have those tortilla chips. Yeah. Got some hummus. Very nice. It was nice. Right. There's, there's the, the vegetable and hummus platter where the plastic lid almost never

[00:08:59] gets taken off to the point where almost every time I go there I'm like, is this the same one? If I open this, is it plastic? Actually? How long can they stretch that one out before they're like, no, we got to throw this one away?

[00:09:05] No offense to the lovely Bell House, of course. We love them. Thank you for putting out the hummus. We love them. And of course, I'm sure it's fresh. That's a daisy. A fish is a daisy. It's a daisy. I'm sure it's fresh. I'm sure it's fresh.

[00:09:23] Here we are today to discuss Oldboy. Certainly yeah, one of the big boys in this filmography. I think it's the big boy. And a seminal film, I think also. It's certainly, let's also just say, it is the old boy of this filmography. Sure, you mean it's old?

[00:09:37] I'm not sure. Yeah, what does that really mean? It's 20 years old. It's certainly the big boy of this filmography. It also is undeniably the old boy of his filmography. It's the only movie he made called Oldboy. That's true. That is accurate.

[00:09:48] You can't push back on that David Starr. What were you going to say? I don't remember. I don't know. It's falling apart already. I have no idea. Right before we started recording, Allison, you asked if any of us knew what the definition of old boy is.

[00:10:02] Yeah, like the kind of terminology old boy is not something that comes up for me very often. Yes, I have to assume because the film is, so for one, it's based on a manga, a Japanese manga, correct? Called Oldboy. Fairly loosely adapted. Yeah, we'll talk about that.

[00:10:16] But you know, but the same title. And then the Korean title is also Oldboy. Like it's in Korean, obviously, but it's not like this movie is called Oldboy in America and it's called like The Man Who Had a Hammer in Korea or whatever, which sometimes that happens.

[00:10:30] It's like, oh, the title just means something completely different. The Man Who Fucked His Daughter. Wait, what? They give away the title? I thought that was a spoiler. But no. Yeah, let's offer some spoilers for a 20 plus year old movie. This is very much a family film.

[00:10:46] It is! It's for the whole family. Oldboy and the Oldboy Network is sort of the terminology. Family likes fucking each other. Go on. Yeah. Uh huh. You know, it refers to if you're, especially if you went to like Eton or whatever, you

[00:10:58] went to like a very fancy British school. OK. And then you graduate, you're called an old boy. OK. I guess just meaning like you were once a boy and now you, you know, when you were at that

[00:11:07] school you were a boy and now you are an old boy. But Ben pointed out that a lot of British sort of greetings are like, hey there old chum. Old sport. Yeah. Uh, yeah. But I don't know. In England you just call it the old boy network.

[00:11:25] Like disdainfully. Like you're referring to. I've never heard of that podcast network. Yeah, they got some good ones. They got David Cameron and Boris Johnson. All those guys. Um, no. They disdainfully refer to like the ruling class. You know, all these guys went to these schools.

[00:11:40] I've seen the old boy network I've heard of. Right. But the idea of being like you're an old boy. I think I would technically be referred to as an old boy from us. I think you all they don't use the word alum or whatever.

[00:11:50] It's so funny to me that I never for a second ever thought, what does that title mean? I just sort of was like, what's a movie about old boy? Like I know his character's name is not old boy and I know they never call him that.

[00:12:01] But I was just like, well, yeah, I don't know. Like Spider-Man. He's old boy. It was one of those things where back in the day, yes, we had the Internet in 2003. I don't know what your guys experience were with this, but we had the Internet. We did.

[00:12:15] I can't remember that far back. Sorry. And like there was a Cannes Film Festival. Uh-huh. Now this film had actually, I think already come out in Korea, but then it went to Cannes.

[00:12:23] My awareness of this movie was entirely for better or worse based on Ain't It Cool pumping this up for like a year. Oh, it was definitely an Ain't It Cool. It was a huge Ain't It Cool. I didn't realize that. I remember that. Hey, you know what?

[00:12:34] Good for them. Like, or whatever. You know, like that was what Ain't It Cool did, I guess. They created those culty, you know, avenues. But it was one where they just sort of like everyone put their chips down. We're like, we're telling you this is a major work.

[00:12:45] So by the time. Obviously, he'd already made, you know, Sympathy for Instability. Like, you know, so he was yeah, he was he was getting some JSA. The time it plays a con, I was like, I need to fucking see this thing now. Everyone is talking about.

[00:12:56] I remember just all the online scuttlebutt at Cannes was Tarantino wants to give this Tarantino is the jury president wants to give it to old boy. Like it's it's the perfect Tarantino movie. Yes.

[00:13:08] It's a fucking film like that's like sort of from a pocket of culture that Americans don't know as much about. And it's super extreme and fucked up and crazy, transgressive, postmodern, noire. Yeah. And then it went to Fahrenheit 9-11. Maybe the worst Cannes decision ever.

[00:13:23] Like maybe the absolute worst decision ever made by a jury. Quite possibly. Yeah. That movie is awful. Yes. And obviously, it's total vapor. Like, it's like we're going to watch. We're not talking about now. It had no impact on anything. I know it made like 100 million dollars.

[00:13:40] Like it was a big deal. Well, I'm sorry. You say it had no impact on anyone. A lot of a lot of shoulders got bruised. People fucking patting themselves on the back, sitting there buying a ticket. Yes. I do agree.

[00:13:53] Like you look at the lineup that year and it's kind of a janky lineup. Sure. But like 2046 was in competition, which I love. Yeah, I know. I think it was in a slightly unfinished version. There was a whole thing with 2046.

[00:14:08] But anyway, fucking, you know, Lucretia Martell's The Holy Girl. That's a great movie. That is a movie I think is a masterpiece. Nobody Knows, the creative movie. The nomenclature movie. That movie is great. Yeah. Old Boy. Tropical Malady, which I think got maybe the jury prize.

[00:14:23] Like, you know, that was the beginning of him getting some attention. Irma P. Hall got a special award that year. Was Lady Killers in competition? It was. That's wild. Lady Killers was in competition and she got a special award.

[00:14:36] It was sort of the Samuel Jackson were giving a supportive performance. Because they gave actor to the lead of Nobody Knows and they gave actress to Maggie Chung for Clean, which is like not the best movie, but like pretty good. And she's amazing in it.

[00:14:49] And that's her last film role? Maggie Chung? Yeah. Yeah, it's been a long time for her. Has she never ever? It's been a long time. It's like only cameos after that. Yeah. A couple came. Weird. So good win. So like, not, not, and he finally got a win.

[00:15:01] Yeah. And then he was like, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. And then he fucking gave it to fucking Michael Moore.

[00:15:07] But anyway, so that was when I was like hearing about Oh Boy, it was like, this is the movie that's been anointed by Quentin Tarantino. Now obviously that's a little patronizing and ridiculous, but 17 year old David, that was my awareness.

[00:15:19] For me, it was like that was being added onto a year of online drumming for this thing where then I was just, I mean, I think I saw this like opening weekend, if not opening day when it played at the Angelica.

[00:15:32] Because by the time it came out, I was just like, well, this is like the phantom menace of international cinema. I've been reading like 18 months of breathless hype on this thing. What about you, Allison? What's your experience with Oh Boy?

[00:15:43] I cannot remember the first time I saw it. Like I cannot remember the context. This feels also I can't, it feels like a movie that would have been in the New York Asian Film Festival.

[00:15:51] You know, like it absolutely like that, like that festival also had an incredible run in it in like the kind of mid aughts where they were just showcasing like all like so many movies from like what we've talked about, the kind of part and extreme era.

[00:16:04] And they were just like an amazing way that those movies got surfaced here. But I cannot remember when I first saw it. I just remember being so intrigued by it because of how edgy it was supposed to be in terms

[00:16:16] of content, you know, and I just like I'm an easy mark for that if something is supposed to be just like truly incendiary. I'm like, sign me up. I'm gonna watch it.

[00:16:25] I, you know, I have an incredibly high tolerance for all of that, but I'm also just very easily intrigued by it. Yeah, and this movie has a I don't know. It's not like that. It's not like it is alone in this regard. Right.

[00:16:39] But it has a combination of like there are scenes in it in which things happen on camera that are so extreme you won't believe it. And also narratively where this movie goes is so extreme you won't believe it. Right.

[00:16:52] Like you're going to be equally disturbed by ideas and images. Whereas I feel like often in that sort of extreme cinema realm, it's like maybe more one than the other. Yeah, absolutely. I think also, you know, this has this old boy has this incredibly potent combination

[00:17:07] of gorgeous filmmaking and then someone's tooth getting removed in close up with the back end of a hammer. And that is something that I don't know. There's something I don't want to say that's my sweet spot because it's so sociopathic.

[00:17:23] But I do feel like I love a gorgeously made movie that is also just like really out there in terms of where it's willing to go. But yeah, like the thing for me rewatching this on a sketchy pirated streaming site because it's not available.

[00:17:39] Impossible to stream right now? Really? Yes. You know, we have physical versions that we bought. I thought I had one as well, but I couldn't find it. Did you watch it on f.movies.com?

[00:17:49] It was one of those ones where it's like 1, 2, 3, 4 movies dot net dot, you know, co dot dot. Rotten.com. Dot Kosovo. You know, where you're like, oh, what's this doing to my computer? But that having been said, David, we both watched on physical copies.

[00:18:03] You I believe bought an out of print American set. I did. I bought an out of print American steelbook set of the Vengeance trilogy. And I bought the Arrow set of the Vengeance trilogy, which is pretty new, but obviously was not commercially released in the United States.

[00:18:16] I don't think there is any North American physical release of this movie currently in print. There's one coming soon, though. Well, right. They're re-releasing it this August. Yes. And which is probably why it's not streaming right now. They're trying to. Right.

[00:18:33] So it'll probably have a physical release after that or whatever. Yeah. But no, it is annoyingly and confusingly considering its reputation. I forgot to mention or just stream. I forgot to mention one other film, of course, that was at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival, Shrek 2. Of course.

[00:18:47] We all remember. Of course. Shrek 1 was at Cannes. Yeah, I knew that. Sure. Well, Shrek was a big deal. Shrek 2. Was it also in competition? Wow. Amazing. Really? What a time. Do you think Katzenberg was just like, it's a done fucking deal. Three's gonna win.

[00:19:03] The third's getting in. It's winning. Final. We're over. We've laid the runway. Yeah, exactly. You know, Pom Dora loves giving out that trophy to the third film in a trilogy. Just waiting. Guys, you were. No, you weren't at Cannes. Were you at Cannes? No, you weren't at Cannes.

[00:19:20] No. I was at Cannes. Ask two more times. Yeah. Were you at Cannes? No, I was at Cannes. I was at Cannes. You were even out of competition. Yeah. Sad. Shrek the third was banned from France. They revoked its passport. Old boy. Yes.

[00:19:35] I think I saw this in theaters when it finally did make it over to me because of all the hype and I think at the time I was like, this movie is crazy. That's how I feel about this movie.

[00:19:50] When I was a teen or yeah, I was like a late teen. I was like, well, this movie is crazy and I can take it. That's like a sign of what a mature. Sure. Sure. You can handle it.

[00:20:00] I smoked a blunt and then watched this movie 100% in high school. And I had my fucking mind blown. Now, you did that yesterday. If I did that yesterday, I wouldn't be here right now. I can't do that anymore.

[00:20:12] And I, yeah, I watched it and I'd seen it again. I like rewatched it at some point. And then I, this is my third viewing of old boy, I think. So I've talked about this in other episodes leading up to this. I have always struggled with this movie.

[00:20:26] You didn't really like it. I ran into it with all this hype and did not like it. Why didn't you like it? Well, let me unpack it because I rewatched it last night for the first time in 20 years, basically. And I still really struggle with this movie.

[00:20:42] And it's not a thing where I'm like morally offended by it in any way. It's not like I have objections on that level. And I think like my tolerance is pretty fucking high for things that happen in movies.

[00:20:56] Like I, you know, I'm the guy who fucking stumped for Star 80. I'm like, there are a lot of movies that I really love that I think are truly like staring into the heart of darkness or depicting like incredibly uncomfortable things, whether thematically or visually or whatever it is.

[00:21:11] And this is just one of the few movies. And perhaps it does have to do with the fact that it is just empirically well made. So everything it's doing perhaps hits a little deeper. But I just like really find this movie unpleasant.

[00:21:25] And I don't say it pejoratively, but I also can't say I ever enjoy watching it. Yeah, I think that's very fair. Yeah, I have all of his other movies other than the first two. I'm like so on board with Park in general.

[00:21:43] And this one is like always a roadblock. It's very unpleasant. Yeah, yeah. I also, my feelings about him in general, I think kind of I like him sometimes a lot and I don't other times.

[00:21:56] But this movie, I think is like it's thrillingly made, you know, like I think they're like just like heart like pulse pounding moments in it, like genuinely like rousing messed up moments.

[00:22:07] And it's it I do think it gets at something about like throw your life away rage and resentment and about what's ultimately about these like two incredibly sad dudes like destroying themselves. And I also think that like a lot of the plot is just so dumb.

[00:22:23] Like it's just so dumb. It is a silly movie. That's why you see, that's why I like it because it's very, very silly. I also don't say this pejoratively. Somewhat whimsical. Yeah.

[00:22:32] But it is this weird balance that I just, I get very icked out watching it and not just by the obvious icky things. The whole thing just kind of makes my skin crawl. It has a very grotty, to use a British expression, aesthetic generally. Yes, it is.

[00:22:46] It's one of the great wallpaper movies. Some nasty wallpaper. Just tons of wallpaper. Everyone everyone in this movie is like, you know what I need in my apartment and or secret private prison. Mold. It's just mold but also incredibly busy wallpaper. Yes.

[00:23:04] I watched the Arrow Vengeance trilogy set has this two hour long documentary called I believe old days. Okay. That's like a 15 plus years later reminiscing on the movie from all the key creative contributors about old boys. Yes, yes. No, no, no, no. Just about old boy. Yeah.

[00:23:24] The DP on this film remind me his name. Isn't it Chung Chung Hoon? I believe Chung Chung Hoon Chung to use the you know, I believe that's his usual. Yes. He said he very strategically wanted to make sure that every single shot in this movie

[00:23:38] had green in it and a good amount of green. And I feel like the most putrid chain of green, very like mossy kind of dank green. And he said it was because green was historically the color that reproduced least easily on film.

[00:23:54] And people would especially in this era be like just stay away from green if you don't want too much green. And it's like he went towards the thing that was going to produce an unpleasant result on camera. Yeah. Yeah. This is a pretty grimy movie.

[00:24:07] It's also interesting, you know, in comparison to Decision to Leave, which also has a lot of epic wallpaper, but it's like gorgeous, dreamy, like symbolic and modern. Handmaiden 2 obviously has beautiful, you know, painted. Yes. Ominous wallpaper type. No, but you're right.

[00:24:23] Decision to Leave in general is very like antiseptic. Yes. Intentionally. Right. It's very sensual. This movie is sweaty and nasty. Yes. And this man has been in a hotel for 15 years and you really feel it. And it's also like he starts out awful.

[00:24:40] The movie starts and you're like, I've got to watch this guy for like two hours. And they're like, no, no, no, don't worry. He's going to get a lot worse. He'll get worse. But his soul's gonna die. Right. Right. Yeah. He's going to turn into a weird ghost.

[00:24:51] He'll sober up a bit. Yes. All right. Oh boy. Let me give you some context. All right. So I assume no one has read the manga. Oh boy. It's very, very different. Have you read it? It's a long series. I read it for years.

[00:25:03] I've seen some videos like Sparks Notes style summaries of it just to confirm that a certain major plot point seems to be absent. It's not in it at all. I believe the whole concept is completely different of like why he did this to him.

[00:25:18] The thing I heard Park Jae say in the documentary was I was much more interested in not why someone imprisoned him for 15 years, but why someone would let him out. Right. Right. Right. Because for imprisoning someone for 15 years is punishment. Sure. Right.

[00:25:36] That would be a punishment that I would not want. But why would he release him and what are you trying to accomplish? What's the final chapter of this? Right. And then he obviously his whole thing he loves about how vengeance and violence, all

[00:25:46] these things curdle and destroy us, these urges and all of that. And I think he just really went like incest is pretty much the most shameful thing in society. Just go for the hottest button. That could be the root of everything. We'll talk about it. Right.

[00:25:59] But the impression I get from the original is it's more just like, I don't know, they had this interaction in school that he was embarrassed by, that the villain was embarrassed by. And so he even though the villain became successful and powerful, he wanted to humiliate this

[00:26:14] man and turn him into a bad person. It's an Iron Man 3. And like that's kind of it. Iron Man 3. Like the discovery at the end is kind of anticlimactic. He was like been searching this whole time for like what did I do to this person to make

[00:26:26] them hate me so much. You were mean to me by like a song I sang in school. You embarrassed me when I felt emotional or something like that. Yeah. Right. Huge Iron Man 3 vibes. I guess so. Sure. Guy Pearce is you're remembering?

[00:26:37] He says I'll meet you up at the hotel. He doesn't show up and Guy Pearce is like, I'll spend the next 20 years trying to destroy you. Yeah. Glowing up. Destroying your life. I like that though. You know, I like a long camp like all consuming campaign of spite.

[00:26:49] Yeah. Well, because of course, because like, yes, if someone did that to me and I finally met them, they probably would be like, don't you understand? And I'll be like, I definitely don't. This is a one sided adversarial thing.

[00:27:00] There's no way I feel the way you do about me, about you. So there's, you know, this, this thing exists. And a movie producer Lim Seung-yong finds the manga, likes the idea and also apparently

[00:27:18] just sort of like is flickering through it and thinks the character looks like Troy Min-sik, this actor, the lead actor. Again, I apologize for my pronunciation. I'm not sure. Troy Min-sik is... And I don't speak Korean, so I cannot really help you out.

[00:27:35] But I'm looking for help, but I'm not expecting it. So for whatever reason, that's the trigger thing. It's just kind of like, oh, this guy kind of looks like, you know, this could be something.

[00:27:45] So he takes it to Park Chan-wook, who is intrigued as this, he likes this sort of like mythological old fairy tale, Pandora's box, but modern thing. He likes that it's kind of a fantasy, which it is. It really is kind of like a fairy tale.

[00:28:05] It feels like it's like an Arthur story. For sure. Right. Like, oh, you know what happened to Sir Blah? He got locked in a castle for 15 years because he pissed this guy off. Not an Arthur, the art park story.

[00:28:14] You know, like that's the whole thing with King Arthur where they're like, and let me tell you about this knight. And what's up with that? Like the Green Knight is one of those. Yeah. It's kind of like, I don't know, like drunk guy. Arthur story.

[00:28:25] It says a lot that Ben went to Dudley Moore Arthur and I went to Eric Brown Arthur. He's called O'Day Sue, right? That's his, that's the character's name, which is a reference to Oedipus. Oh, sure. Sort of again, thinking of this as like, you know, tragic Greek myth.

[00:28:45] Right. And apparently because they're casting Choi Min-sik, who I guess is just a very big actor at the time. I think he had had his breakthrough in the nineties and just become a very big star.

[00:28:59] They're like, he kind of needs to be quote unquote heroic in the movie, even though he is going to be a mess. Interesting. He'll be like fighting. Okay. You know what I mean? He is kind of like iconic. He's cool. Yeah. His hair is cool.

[00:29:13] You need to make him into a little bit more of an action star, even if it's a weird version of an action star. And they had to talk him into the hairstyle. It's an iconic hairstyle.

[00:29:21] Which is totally the right choice, but I can assume why they were like, look, you'll look like Albert Einstein. Like, it's great. You know, that he was like, what are you doing?

[00:29:28] They show a bunch of the hair and makeup tests and they also in this documentary, and they also he talks about a present day and he talks about it as if it is still an act of trauma

[00:29:36] as he's recounting the moment where they did the test on him. They basically gave him a big perm, I think. They had to like wrap his hair in foil for like three days to make him look like he'd like been in the microwave.

[00:29:45] Yeah, hair does not do that normally. It looks like a rat's nest. Like it's all matted. Right, but it looks like a drawing also. Like it really does look like something that would be on the page where someone is just like a puffball.

[00:29:57] There's that animation principle of like you should design your character so that they all work in silhouettes. Blacked out, you can always tell just from the shape of their body without the details. We're like every Simpsons character works purely in silhouette.

[00:30:10] A lot of Disney movies function that way. Like they all have a certain shape. No one else looks like this guy. And the hair helps a lot, but even just the fit of his suit and his posture and everything. Right.

[00:30:21] He's like his joints feel like they work weirdly somehow. Something has gone on. And the smile, obviously. The smile, which is just you would not be surprised if the first time he did it, just like blood started seeping in between like from his gums.

[00:30:34] We'll talk about the final shot of the movie. Very crucial how he expresses himself facially. This is an astounding performance. It really is. He's amazing. I've only seen him in a few movies. Obviously he popped up in what, Lucy?

[00:30:49] Like he did eventually do a couple English language movies, but I feel like he is, you know, largely he's in Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. One, I'm forgetting. No, but was there one other sort of Hollywood foray? Not that I can see. But you know, I look around.

[00:31:07] He's done a lot of theater. And like when you look at his theater career in Korea, it's like Equus, Our Town. Yes. The Pillow Man. Like he does a lot of like Western plays that like get brought, you know, which so I think

[00:31:21] he's like a very venerated sort of like, you know, serious actor. Exactly. Oh, it's just I was just thinking of I Saw the Devil, which is obviously not a Hollywood film but was a huge crossover years later. And also was a huge hit, right?

[00:31:33] That was like a number one box office hit. Humongous hit. Such a messed up movie. I've never seen it. I know it to be nasty. But that was talk about a movie that's like benefiting from. That's the Tale of Two Sisters guy, right? Yes.

[00:31:48] But it's got that sort of like, well, it's like the old boy guy in another movie that's fucked up. And that's like work. People fucking bought the DVD. Yeah. Apparently then. OK, so there's a press conference announcing this film, which I think is commonplace in the Korean industry.

[00:32:00] And they're like, so you're doing another movie about vengeance? You just did a movie about vengeance. And Park impulsively is like, maybe I'll do a third movie about vengeance. And hence we have a vengeance trilogy.

[00:32:10] But I don't think he was like in his studio being like, I must explore vengeance. I'm imagining him to a Kevin Feige press conference announcing the phases of the Vengeance trilogy in advance. And have we ever wondered about Lady Vengeance? So, OK.

[00:32:28] You know, here's some quotes from him. The reason I want to show shocking things is that they always pose an ethical question when we're confronted with extreme situations. We forget about moral issues. We simply act and then must accept the consequences.

[00:32:43] I want to show the moral issues involved in everyday life by heightening them. Now, Alison, you've interviewed him. I have. And it's just like from all these dossiers we're getting, like he really talks in these

[00:32:52] like blocks of text that are quite academic or how I don't know how to describe it. But like, he's not really like a punchy talker. Like he's very, very, very thoughtful and long winded.

[00:33:04] So I was supposed to interview him for like a New York Magazine rubric that is in conversation, right? Which is like back and forth kind of like Q&A style, but like longer piece. And you know, like two things that really don't make for conversation are one going

[00:33:20] through translator. Yeah. What is his does he speak English at all? He could clearly like pick up some of it, but like he uses a translator. And you know, in general, I shouldn't I think I shouldn't have done this interview.

[00:33:34] Like someone who is an actual Korean speaker should have done this interview. You know, going through a translator is always going to lead to what like a weird rhythm and also just like losing context. Yeah, I was gonna say also, I mean, him speaking in large blocks.

[00:33:47] Like the few times I've had to do something through a translator, you are like, I'm not gonna do one sentence back and forth. You're gonna do a big question. And a big answer. And automatically. Yeah.

[00:34:00] But I do also think that he just has this kind of like sturdy intellectual reputation. Yeah. Well, like so I the first time I interviewed him like twice or three times, I can't remember.

[00:34:11] But like the first time it was in person and I asked him what I thought was like a softball like question to get a. How are you doing today? It was something like that. And then he answered for like 10 minutes.

[00:34:23] Like he talks and then the translator translated and then he talks more and the translator translated and then he talks more and the translator translated. And I was like, oh no. But you know, yes, he is very, very intellectual about, you know, how he talks about his films

[00:34:38] and like very considered but like very, very serious. Which is funny. I think sometimes when you look like his movies are like goofier sometimes. This movie is pretty goofy. Yeah, I think of him as consistently goofy. Yeah.

[00:34:52] Like pretty much there's pretty much humor in all of his movies. Strange humor or just yeah, like fanciful twists of sort of I think that is story. One of the things that put him on the map and then with this movie made him sort of like,

[00:35:06] oh, this is a director. I know what I'm getting when I'm going to see a Park Chan-wook film. His name means something is this very bizarre mix of tones he has on top of the sort of

[00:35:15] thematic concerns and the aesthetic proclivities and, you know, the intensity and all that sort of shit. It is like how can this guy balance this sort of incredibly goofy comedy with serious action sequences with like overcrunching emotional stuff? Yeah. Alison, I read your most recent interview.

[00:35:37] My brain is not working today. The one you did when Decisional Leave was coming out. That was the one where I spoke to him three times for that all together. And yeah, I was like, I want to I want to see what you say.

[00:35:47] Alison's coming on the show. I should read this interview. And I was like, why is all of this familiar? And I realized basically every single answer he gave, JJ used in the dossier for our first episode.

[00:35:57] So if you want to invoice JJ, you basically wrote that dossier for him. I mean, that's nice to hear because I was worried it was hard to get him to talk about things that I feel, you know, he's especially when you're going through someone's like past

[00:36:11] work like they just have a bunch of stories that they've already told and they kind of like fall into that as much, you know, like there's but but I think there are some things,

[00:36:20] especially with regard to when he said like after this movie, he felt bad about how Mido, the like female character was left like not having all the information about say her relationship. And everything that just happened. Like a little laminated card being like, by the way. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:36:43] Yeah. He fucked you. No, but he made several films after this that were all attempts at correcting. Exactly. Yes. The lack of agency. Right. I mean, it's not a surprise to go straight from this into Lady Vengeance. And Handmaiden and Decisional Leave.

[00:36:57] He was saying in your interview, like those were both still him trying to address what he felt were shortcomings in Old Boy. Yeah. And he works with female screenwriters now, like he makes a point of that.

[00:37:08] And I think like his family gets kind of also like gives more feedback. And but yes, certainly in this movie, it's like very glaring. He seems very aware of it. I just especially the Handmaiden.

[00:37:20] I feel like he was really like, I have like feel like I'm much more of a feminist than I was 20 years ago. I just I think we'll talk about it when that movie comes around.

[00:37:29] It's probably is it's one of the things that icks me out about this movie. And I'm not saying this in like a morality police, you know, kind of way. But it is just like everything in this movie is awful. Right. Basically, every character is despicable.

[00:37:44] Everything everyone's living through is horrendous. Right. And I, you know, I'm usually very tuned into everything is terrible. Everyone's the worst movies because that matches my basic viewpoint on the world. But this character in particular, you're just like, I feel so fucking bad for her.

[00:38:04] She's kind of the only person who in no way has this coming. Yes. You know, and she just gets so fucked in so many ways while also not really being given any narrative agency or interiority where you're like this whole movie. She's just hypnotized. Right.

[00:38:21] And then like, I mean, you get that one glimpse of her like in the past and she's just crying alone on the subway. You're like, man, like even before, before you had this encounter where, yeah, you were hypnotized into this thing. Your life was filled with misery. Yeah.

[00:38:37] Yeah. Yes. It's a bit of a bummer. Yeah. She gets a raw deal. I mean, everyone does. But I do think this, this movie, I do think is like very much about like all encompassing

[00:38:48] specifically masculine rage and the rest of the world just kind of gets swept up by kind of idiocy in a sense. Yeah. Yeah. I just, I just feel so bad for her at every moment in this film to a point where it does

[00:39:02] just sort of start to like affect my, my view. You just don't want to watch it. No, I get that. It's sort of the way you now David like talk about when we watch movies where there were like small children or small children, baby. Right. Exactly. Right.

[00:39:17] Where you're just like, I just can't even process it. I just don't like to think about it. It's like I can process it, but I just don't want to think about it. Now sometimes I'm going to have to. Yeah. I'm, this is my job.

[00:39:26] I got to see movies where children are in peril or whatever, but uh, hate it. But I usually almost love thinking about horrendous things to the extent where you just say, Griffin, stop thinking about that. Maybe you don't though. Maybe you're realizing this about yourself. I don't know.

[00:39:42] Like that was the thing was watching this when it came out, knowing its legacy was so great being excited to rewatch it for this. I was like, I'm like, I just watched this and be like, oh, I was like 14 when I saw this, whatever. Sure. Yeah.

[00:39:56] But it was, it was interesting in a way I do have to absolutely commend this movie for it still affected me as viscerally. Yeah. I mean, I, you know, rewatching this and I hadn't seen it for years.

[00:40:07] That it is, I think that relationship and the, the, that is the stuff in the movie that is more upsetting than any of the violence, you know, knowing the twist going in on a review, every scene just becomes worse. Yes. You know, the writing process is complicated.

[00:40:31] There's like three different writers. Park Chan-wook is doing a lot of rewrites. Troy Ben-Sick is very involved. They're like running all kinds of stuff by him. He for example, comes up with the octopus eating scene even though he is like a Buddhist

[00:40:47] vegetarian who does not usually eat live octopi. And you say not usually what like once a month? Exactly. Yeah. Right. The thing is, people do eat live octopus. That is a concept in cuisine. They chop it up for you. Right. They kill it.

[00:41:04] It's like still like moving but that's like kind of like, yeah, like nerve ending stuff of it. But like, yeah, you're not like, yeah, it's being served like here it is an octopus and

[00:41:16] there's like a clip from some DVD extra behind the scenes that's on YouTube that you can see where he like apologizes to the octopus each time. That's nice at least. It had to do with like, like four times. Yeah. Yeah. It's supposed to be good.

[00:41:33] I mean, delicious but complex. I know I feel bad because they're pretty smart. I mean, not that that has stopped me from eating other animals that are supposedly smart. Look, this is a long road we can go down. Yeah, I guess. Yeah. You know, ethically compromised. That's me.

[00:41:49] But yeah, you know, I think what makes that scene beyond like shock value so like seared in my brain is that the like tentacles keep twisting around. That's what I was gonna say. You know, they like, it's like.

[00:42:00] That was a scene where I had been told that was obvious. It was one of the three things you heard about the movie. Like there's this scene where he fucking smashes everyone with a hammer. There's a scene where he does and he eats an octopus whole.

[00:42:13] And I just remember being like, I don't know what you're talking about. Like I cannot conceive of that. What does that mean? Like and so what I imagined was horrible. And then the movie is at the rare time where it's actually kind of more disturbing than

[00:42:26] what you could imagine. Yes. But it's also like of the moments of like just really this like nihilistic jolts. Like, you know, I'd say that like the scene where he's walking away and the guy falls in the car behind him and he like grins has that same energy.

[00:42:41] The octopus. There are a few moments like where you're just that you really I feel like that is what the film wants to offer more than anything. Is this like. Like look at how fucked up this is, but also isn't it thrilling? Like you've never seen this before.

[00:42:56] There was an anecdote. Maybe it was from the producer of the DP saying they when they shot that day where he does the smile after the guy falls on the car that might have been the first day of the movie

[00:43:06] or if not was very early on in the shoot. And he said like I want you to give me a smile where I can't tell if you're about to laugh or cry. And he did that and like Park like rubbed his hands together.

[00:43:19] He's like, we have a movie. Yes. It's sort of like that's the tone I'm trying to achieve. We've got it in that shot. Now I know what to pursue. But yes, no, the octopus thing is wild.

[00:43:31] Biggest problem Park has with the screenplay is the ending, which I think is probably initially hewing more to the original. Okay. Didn't like the ending had to think of a new ending.

[00:43:40] And as you say, he basically is just kind of like, well, incest is the worst thing imaginable. Most shameful. Yeah. Um, you know, uh, it's a, it that's, I think that really, he says he came up with it while he was going to the bathroom.

[00:43:59] Uh, I don't know what that means, but he basically like came out of the bathroom at some restaurant and like said to his producer, like, I've got a great idea. You know, like here's what we're going to do.

[00:44:08] He thinks it's quote unquote a happy ending, but he sort of means that I think in a tragic, horrifying way. Yeah. Uh, he did ban his daughter, his, his oft mentioned daughter from seeing the film. Uh, he, he deemed it too awkward for her to see it. Yeah.

[00:44:26] Yeah, certainly. He talks all the time, Alison and these dossiers about like, like the movies he makes where he's like, I made it for my daughter. And you're like, you did? Like Stoker is one where he's like, I wanted to make a movie about a 19 year old girl.

[00:44:38] I mean, these are episodes coming up. But this is the one where you're just very relieved to hear he did not make it for his daughter. Right. Right. That he in fact said my daughter's banned from seeing this movie.

[00:44:50] Um, but uh, yeah, so, um, old boy, uh, let's talk about it. Um, it's about a businessman who is arrested for public drunkenness. He's being a bit of a rascal. You open with the rooftop scene where he's holding a guy by the time being like, you

[00:45:07] want to hear my life story, bro? Yeah. And you're like, who the fuck is this guy? And then it cuts to him as a, as a drunken businessman where he looks so radically different,

[00:45:17] not just in obviously how he styled, but also just like, oh, this guy has life in his eyes. Yeah. But he was also like, he's, he gained lost weight, right? For this role. And he clearly is like bigger in that, like deliberately. Yeah. His face is different.

[00:45:31] Uh huh. Very, very different. The first time I saw this, I thought we were cutting to a different person. Right. It's never taking me a little while to realize once he gets into imprisonment, oh, it's the same guy from the opening. And then they bring us back around.

[00:45:43] But yes, uh, he's drunk. It's his daughter's birthday. He's fucking up. He's not getting home in time. Uh, his best friend is trying to help him out. Uh, right. He's at the police station, right? With this, uh, drunken disorderly. Uh, yeah. He's been picked up for public drunkenness.

[00:46:00] He misses his daughter's birthday. Um, kind of very depressing pay phone, phone call. Apologizing. Right. Yeah. He's got the angel wings like as a present, right? Yes. Uh, and, uh, he is, gets picked up by his friend and I guess he's going to go home and

[00:46:18] then he gets, you know, kidnapped and put into a weird hotel room with a pet door. But you just immediately don't really like this guy. You're like, this guy's annoying. No, no. He's like falling all over the floor. He's like such a buffoon. Yeah.

[00:46:32] And he's so like self amused. Like this is the guy where he gets on your subway car, you move to a different subway car. Yeah. Also the scene where he disappears. It's like this kind of looks like a crane shot, right?

[00:46:42] Like it's like there's something which is like so like, yeah, where he has this kind of like moments of like this kind of classical, like, you know, uh, just like in terms of

[00:46:51] how he, he, he frames things and like moves the camera in the middle of this movie that also then. Wait, is it in this or because we're doing all these movies, I don't know.

[00:47:00] I was like, it's one shot where like the camera goes between two people and around. And I was just like, I don't know how you did that. It doesn't look handheld. Like I just am watching it being like, what is this? Yeah. What did you do?

[00:47:14] There's not enough space for you to like lay a track, but I don't anyway. Yeah. So cool. Every movie of his has some shot like that where you're just like, I don't understand this. I do think there's something. Decisionally full of them.

[00:47:24] I know that adds a lot of visual effects and stuff, but you know. We talked a lot about in the first episode how he grew up at a time where there wasn't that much of a South Korean cinema and he is mostly seeing films from other countries.

[00:47:35] He's not going to the theater much. He's seeing whatever's on TV and it's a lot of classic Hollywood and it's a lot of new wave French films and I'm sure they were subtitled, you know, but he's young.

[00:47:47] It makes sense cinematically in terms of how his sense of language develops visually, right? This is a guy who's probably getting a lot more from the cinematic technique as a child than understanding the nuances of plot points, right? Yeah.

[00:48:02] Like he's sitting there watching grown up movies with his parents on TV and he's really going like, why is the camera doing that? Right. You know, what is getting taken with the images of stars faces?

[00:48:13] I don't think I thought about that until I was older, like a teenager or something. When I'm a kid, I don't think I was like, what's the camera doing? Yeah. Like I was just trying to follow narrative. Right.

[00:48:24] And I think you can see it all over his work where he just like absorbed so much of this. Yes. And then this really, in a way that I think it's not deployed in the same way that if

[00:48:33] you had just gone to a film school, you know, that like that you would kind of have learned maybe a more narrow path towards that, you know, he kind of deploys them really in ways that are very unexpected.

[00:48:44] I just think there's something to this generation that he's part of South Korean directors who didn't really have a local national cinema culture to grow up around and everything they were digesting was imported from other countries. Right.

[00:48:58] They're not seeing cinema reflect their daily existence, their culture, and it's not in their language. It all feels a little foreign and alien to them. And so they're processing it and kind of maybe a little bit of a backwards way where the

[00:49:11] technique is coming through first and foremost. You know, film stars, Troy Mansik. The villain is played by this actor, Yoo Ji-Tae. Another incredible performance. An amazing performance. However, that man is also significantly younger than Troy Mansik and it's not hidden in the movie. No.

[00:49:32] It makes no sense that they would be classmates. No. Yeah. To the point that like you're almost like, what's the further trist here? And it's like, no, no, no, they just were classmates. Don't think about it. Right.

[00:49:40] I think they're the closest they come to addressing as being like, well, he was like two years below him. Uh huh. This guy was 15 years old. Two dog years below him? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:49:49] And he wanted, Park wanted to cast this actor Han Suk-kyu who is the co-star of Troy Mansik in this film number three and another film called Shiri, both of which were like smash hits. Yeah. Shiri was like a blockbuster video standard also.

[00:50:02] Probably just trying to be like, hey man, let's get the gang together here. Yeah. But Troy Mansik is like, no, cast this younger guy. I really like his vibe and he is amazing in the movie.

[00:50:12] And I think they're the overall thinking on the age thing was like, who cares? Like this movie is so chaotic. Let's just embrace it. Sure. And be unconventional like everything else about the movie is so unconventional.

[00:50:23] He also like has such this like rarified wealthy person life that you can just kind of accept that like, oh, like life is just less hard on you. He's bathing in blood. Exactly. Bathing in blood. You know, the way that rich people we all know. Yeah. I also.

[00:50:39] We were talking about this off mic. We were talking about this off mic. It's really weird that you refer to that. We all know that. We were all normal. Yes. And to be clear, we were talking about it off mic because we all do it. Of course.

[00:50:52] That's why we look so beautiful with our bouncing skin. Yeah. Just glowing. I was going to say there was that one shot where he is like doing that like yoga move

[00:51:02] where he like lifts his legs up and he has headphones on and is crying and you just see his like miserable face as he like impossibly lifts like half his body off the in the air

[00:51:12] and it is just such an indelible image like that is actually alongside the octopus like one of the scenes I remember the most. Absolutely. And it's his like hair helmet. He has like the firmest raised like back hair. Super gelled. Yeah.

[00:51:27] Like you feel like you could snap it off. Yeah. They said that the whatever the gel, whatever the product they use was so strong that to get it out, they would like end up removing clumps of hair.

[00:51:38] That by the end of it, he was like patchy and it took a while to grow back in. I think there's something to the fact in terms of their age gap. And I don't think this was intentional at all.

[00:51:51] But it's part of why I may be like accept it in some sort of a static truth kind of way where it's like, well, our lead character has been in imprisonment for 15 years and it's been a rough 15 years. Yeah. That's fair. He aged harder than most.

[00:52:05] He's got the city miles. And it's sort of like this guy is the exact same age he was when he imprisoned the other guy. Right? Yeah. It's like one of them has sort of stayed exactly the same and the other one has aged twice as fast. All right.

[00:52:17] So right. The plot of the movie, right? He's in the hotel room. He's being fed dumplings every day via pet door. They gas him. They gas him. Here's the thing with the gas. No good. It's definitely not good.

[00:52:30] But as someone who has trouble sleeping, you kind of like the idea. I was 11 p.m. I'm going to my room. I was a little bit like, what if there was a fucking switch in my room where I could gas my ass? The opposite of an air purifier.

[00:52:44] A big boxing glove that just like and then you're like, well, I do like that too. I do like that too. The gas looks so peaceful. Like he's often in bed already. And I was just like, ah. Like, yes. I understand. But it's one of those things.

[00:52:57] I'm on the bleeding edge of being like, what if I just died? I mean, you raise some interesting points. There's something. Let's let's explore them. No, I wouldn't be surprised if I heard like that's another thing crazy rich people do

[00:53:11] is like bathe in blood, use Ozempec, gas themselves to sleep. So you get a solid tan. Basically what Michael Jackson was doing. He had to be like, yeah. Well, dated. Yeah. Are you guys on gas TikTok? And I always, I always just prolific.

[00:53:24] Lady Gaga has total gas face. One of my favorite concepts in Inception is the people who are like, yeah, we've done Inception too long to actually be able to go to sleep. So we have to be put to sleep by the machine.

[00:53:34] I think about that scene all the time. Just all the people like lying out there. The fact that that movie just fucking drops that in for one scene and it doesn't factor back into the plot. Yep. Um, so yeah, so he goes crazy.

[00:53:45] He starts imagining ants crawling over himself. He tries to kill himself. He starts stitching lines into his hand for every year. Sort of sort of manually tattoos himself. He has the line I butchered, which would it have been easier if going in?

[00:53:58] I knew it was going to be 15 years, which is right off the bat. You see him imprisoned. You don't know how long it's going to be. He says that line before we're basically seeing the time lapse of all this time. So you're just like 15 years. Holy fucking shit.

[00:54:11] And it is a good question. Is it easier to survive if you think every day I might get out tomorrow or if you know it's going to be 15 years, I just got to ride this out.

[00:54:20] He's trying to dig a tunnel, but he is on like a high floor. Yes. Like he does eventually punch a hole in the wall. It's also taking an incredibly long time. Right. So yeah. And also like he's being watched, which I feel like he sort of knows.

[00:54:32] Yeah, absolutely. He gets TV. He does get TV. So he watches. I do love that montage of like all the historical events that happened, some of which I'm like, well sure 9-11 Princess Diana dying and others like presidents being elected and like the,

[00:54:47] you know, reopening of Hong Kong and things like that, you know. Oh, let's mention. That are more specific. The other thing he gets from the TV is that he has been framed for his wife's murder. Yes. Yes. He gets that right away. Right. Right.

[00:55:00] Um, and then one day he gets out, uh, he wakes up in a suitcase. He wakes up in the middle of the night to a woman hypnotizing him. Well first there's that. Sure. Yes. Yes. Right.

[00:55:11] Uh, and then the next thing he knows he's in a suitcase in the middle. Which was the central marketing image of Spike Lee's remake of this film. Which is fascinating. Was the suitcase. Not a bad image to be clear.

[00:55:20] No, it's a great, I mean like it's, it's, and especially it's like shot from above and you don't, and then you understand that you're not in a field, you're on a rooftop and uh, you know, I've never seen. No, I haven't seen it. Have you seen it?

[00:55:32] Oh no. I, I, do you know what actually I think I may have, but I have retained nothing. Like I, it's gone. Like it's gone from my head. I know it has this reputation of like there's actually a decent cut of it that never went out.

[00:55:44] They released it at 105 minutes. Berlin said Spike Lee's cut was up 140 and was good. Right. Um, I have no, who knows. Yeah. But uh, a truly like forgotten thing is that that happened. Yes. Made zero money. It was released by like film district. Right.

[00:56:00] Starring Thanos and Scarlet Witch. Right. True. And like as far as I know, that movie is basically identical plot wise. Like it has the incest twist. Yes. Though I think at the end they don't end up together. No, I think he like checks himself back into the prison.

[00:56:15] Right. That's maybe the one difference. He punishes himself. But he does nonetheless in that movie had sex with his dog. Yes. Like that is certainly in the film. No, the wild thing is because when this came out, by the time it finally came out in the

[00:56:29] United States, I remember already being announced obviously with all of its hype with Khan and everything. Justin Lin is going to remake this with Nicolas Cage. Right. I went into it thinking how will Nicolas Cage do this movie? I remember the whole time watching it.

[00:56:41] I do remember the Cage thing. Yeah. And then you get to the end and you go, well, they're never going to let this happen in an American film. Right. Yeah. And then you go, well, I'm sure that Spielberg and Will Smith are going to make it. Yes.

[00:56:52] I remember the Will Smith thing. And that's a public announcement. And then it came out like we're actually doing a different adaptation of the comic. We're not looking to remake Park Chan-wook's film. We will be changing the plot. Right.

[00:57:05] And then it kind of came out that they had gotten the rights from the Korean company that had made the Park Chan-wook film, but that those rights didn't enable them to be able to sell the underlying comic rights.

[00:57:22] So they were like, the only thing you could do is remake the film literally. At which moment Spielberg and Smith tap out and suddenly it's Spike Lee. Yes. And Josh Brolin is his 10th choice.

[00:57:31] And it's like one of the only films that is a Spike Lee film, not a Spike Lee joint because he is like his version of taking the name. The closest he comes. Right. Yeah.

[00:57:41] And then it came out that, yeah, then they just had Spike Lee remake it pretty straightforwardly with all the fucked up shit. Right. It's in New Orleans, right? Yes. Yeah. But yeah, I think it is a basic retelling. Yes. But yeah, whatever.

[00:57:56] But my main thing when I watch this version, I go, God, Sharlto Copley would really lend... That's true. That's actually the worst curse. It was made during the brief like, Sharlto Copley should be in everything phase. Yeah. And he does the same thing in everything. I'm crazy.

[00:58:08] Hello, listen to me. Old boy. Okay. So he gets out and yes. Who is this man on the roof? He's going to commit suicide. Right. He's just a guy who happened to be there. Just happened to be there. A depressed man. He thinks his life's bad. Right. Right.

[00:58:28] Wait till he talks to this guy. I hate that he has this dog. I know. I was upset about that too. Yeah. That's the thing that's upsetting for me. That dog did not do anything to deserve this. Maybe the dog wrote a suicide note as well.

[00:58:39] Maybe the dog was like, Hey, please, can you, I can't get to the top of a building by myself. We hate this joke. Go on David. No. Griffin. We hate the whole room. Here's the thing Griffin. Disaster. Absolute disaster. Show is canceled.

[00:58:53] Look, obviously I don't love animal cruelty in films, but like. I don't either. No, no, no, but I'm saying, but I, it does not bother me. I'm not a pet owner. Sure.

[00:59:00] And I do feel like I'm like, well, yeah, I, it bounces off me a little better for what I, and I know there's some people who are like, you have to tell me like, hey, did you see that movie?

[00:59:09] Did you have to tell me what happens to the dog? You know, like, because they know, like I won't be able to hack it. Sam Rogel, one of my best friends, past and future guests, loves the John Wick franchise more than anything.

[00:59:18] Every time a new one comes out, he does an all day marathon, which now takes a while. But he skips the dog killing. And he's just like, when the first one came out, I was not a dog owner. Since then I am.

[00:59:28] It's my closest relationship with my wife in my life more than my wife. And he's like, I now just start John Wick, you know, 20 minutes in or I skip that one scene. I mean, Forky has seen John Wick three or four times and she definitely has never watched

[00:59:41] that scene. She just leaves the room anyway. Right. So he recounts things to the rooftop man, goes downstairs. I bet you're wondering how I ended up here. Right. And then the rooftop man does kill himself and he's kind of like.

[00:59:55] Well, you also have that funny bit where the rooftop man is like, now let me tell you my story. And he's just like, nope. He's like, I don't care. I don't know what you thought this was, but this is not what we're doing. No.

[01:00:06] And pretty much right away, he ends up in the Chinese, the sushi restaurant. Yeah. Not a Chinese restaurant, sushi restaurant. The Chinese restaurant is later. That's how he figures out. The dumplings. Yeah. Yeah. The sushi restaurant. Well, because he's been hypnotized. Right. He's like, they're like.

[01:00:21] He has, as we now, as we later know, he's been essentially subliminally told to go into this restaurant. I have forgotten not having seen this film in almost two decades that she was hypnotized as well.

[01:00:29] And I was just like, this is really a big ass that she falls for him this immediately. Oh yeah. No. Because he's not appealing. Aggressively, unappealing. Unappealing and also treats her terribly. Not very nice. And eats a giant octopus. You have to imagine he smells terrible.

[01:00:43] Like everything about this guy. You know, they gave him a new suit and everything. So, you know, he might actually smell okay. Fresh linen. Yeah. But, but yes, no, she's just immediately like touching him. Oh man, that guy who just came in here. Yeah.

[01:00:57] And ate a live octopus. That's what I want. And then like slammed his head against the counter after taking a phone call. Right. Yeah. And then brings him back to her place and she wins him over. But again, all of this is pre-programmed in a way.

[01:01:12] So it's almost silly to talk about. But also like he tries to assault her, right? Like immediately. Like while she's on the toilet. He just walks into the bathroom and tries to start making stuff happen. Yeah. Right. And all of nothing dissuades her. Like nothing.

[01:01:26] Well, her response to that is we don't know each other's names yet. Obviously I want to have sex with you because I invite you back to my place. Let's just do this in the right order. I would be like, get out of my place. But I'm not hypnotized.

[01:01:37] Hypnotized. I'm not a hypnotized. And I feel like, yeah, fairly quickly they start to zero in on like, okay, well, who is delivering the dumplings? Right. That's how we'll figure out, you know. This actress who plays Mido. When she was auditioning. Kang Hye Jung. Yes.

[01:01:57] She had to audition with the sushi restaurant scene and she came in with a giant sushi knife. And did her audition with the knife. And then like, obviously no other price. She's not like chopping up food, but she was just like acting with a knife in her hand.

[01:02:11] So she had a prop. And they were like, you brought the knife all the way from home for the audition? And she was like, no, I realized on the walk over here I should probably have a knife.

[01:02:18] So I just kind of jumped into a restaurant and asked if I could borrow one. And they were like, what do you do? Like you borrow knives at restaurants? I personally have never asked to borrow a knife at a restaurant.

[01:02:28] I've never been like, can I take the check? And also, can you lend me a knife? Those are probably really expensive. Yeah, they're fancy. So she was like, keep them sharp. I was just like, they have a ton of them. She's very charming. Right.

[01:02:41] Her mind was they have so many of them. They'll be fine letting me take one for 45 minutes. And they were so astounded that they said that, that then Park Jung-wook went over to the restaurant and said, like, can you just verify this story for me?

[01:02:54] And I think like the fact that that was so compellingly weird was basically the reason they cast her. Yes. And he was also apparently, um, yeah, no, basically like she's so like without shame and without, you know, um, you know, guile, I guess.

[01:03:13] To do something like that is so crazy. My brother once when he was young got hired. I probably shouldn't tell this story. Got hired for a job. And then like a few weeks later, one of the people at the job was like, it's so crazy

[01:03:28] you got this job after the almonds. And my brother was like, what do you mean? And they were like, in the middle of the interview, you just opened a pack of almonds and started eating them without addressing the situation, like without being like, hey, by the way,

[01:03:39] I'm really hungry or I have to eat almonds to live. Or he just do Joey, Joey, just like casually. I think that's a power move. Exactly. I think you and the guy was like, and we just had no idea what, why you did that.

[01:03:53] And we did discuss it. And I do think it secretly worked to his advantage. It's incredibly powerful. Absolutely. Like this is it just insane confidence. My brother's 100 percent was just like, oh, I was just hungry and I had almonds in my pocket.

[01:04:05] Like I think that's he was thinking of a package. Yeah. He didn't just pull out some loose almonds. Yeah. That would be too far. It would just be that would be kind of gross. Right. Yeah. No. Yeah. OK. So, yeah.

[01:04:20] So they figure out the Chinese restaurant that is making his prison food. And so through that, once they teamed up, he's like, I want answers. I'm on the case now. Right. Want to find out what happened to my daughter. Want to find out who in prison.

[01:04:31] She's read his journals, too, and she's kind of gotten invested through reading his life story and really wanting to help. To be fair, a pretty nuts story. Yeah. It's an interesting story. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She she's also like got the weird chat room thing. Yeah.

[01:04:50] That's a kind of very underdeveloped little thread in there where she's kind of in there chatting with someone online who turns out to be very important to this story. Yeah. I feel like there's one other thing about this. I don't remember. But basically, yes.

[01:05:05] You know, with her with her gumption and his hammer skills, they can do anything. They're an undefeatable team. Quickly, she finds what she thinks is information about his daughter. Right. That's the thing. They dismiss the daughter thing pretty quickly.

[01:05:19] She was adopted by a couple in Switzerland or Sweden. That's it. They can't find her, but she's fine. Right. Yeah. They kind of just give a piece of paper with an international number and like a Swedenized name and everything. And he's just like, you know what?

[01:05:32] I don't need to fucking interrupt her life. Right. Yeah. So they go to the prison, which is just a good thing, by the way. They push the daughter out of the plot because then we just never have to think about that ever again.

[01:05:43] And it's just taken care of. Go to the prison. One of those classic hotel prisons. Guys like fucking run like 20 of these rooms. I just have so many questions. I have all the permits.

[01:05:58] If we could have just like hovered there for like a half an hour in the middle where he just explains the business model and the workings, it would have been amazing. I would love a spinoff workplace sitcom about this. Yeah.

[01:06:10] Well, especially because he mentions he's like, you know, some people, they do the business with like people who need bodyguards, but like we don't do that. Like, you know, our niche in the private hotel prison business would be like thriving into the industry. Really? Some people do that?

[01:06:25] Yeah. How do you find like where this guy is like, I need to punish this man. Can you call? Can you find anyone who, you know, in between floors on a building? Right. Runs like a sort of seventh and a half floor kind of vibe.

[01:06:38] Also, there's one part where he's on the phone to a client. He says like, you know, well, if it's a stay for longer than six months, transport is free, which presumes that they're comparing prices and deals. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. It's a competitive business. 15 years.

[01:06:52] Do you think they make him put down a card for incidentals? Definitely. Yes. And then, you know, they email them every year. Your cards expiring. Yeah. Great. Do we think it's a real thing that exists in the world, Ben? Well, there's another movie about a hammer man.

[01:07:07] I think rich people do shit like this. You know, You're Never Really Here. Oh, yeah. Also has like the creepy prison. Obviously, that's sex trafficking kind of thing. It's the Bordello version of it. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, David, that's a great counter.

[01:07:25] Like, that's a deeply disturbing movie that I'm obsessed with and watch compulsively. I mean, I think that movie is very good. Yeah. I don't think you should be watching it compulsively. I study it like the blade.

[01:07:35] But I think that's one of my favorite movies of the last 10 years. You know, a very sort of nasty idea of what life is like right now. Right. But that also like that is another movie where the main character is kind of cast as like a creature almost.

[01:07:51] Like there's something very like animal, you know, like Troy Minsink. His character in this movie describes himself as a monster constantly. And there is something of the monster to him. Absolutely. And I think in that movie, too, he's like a beast. I wasn't thinking of the comparison.

[01:08:04] And perhaps this is something I need to litigate with my therapist tomorrow. But I don't know why I'm like so all in on that. A movie I've like recommend certain people and they're just like, that's just too much for me. And it is that movie is much. Absolutely.

[01:08:17] It's very much right. And then like features a hammer. Yeah. I'm saying another hammer man. Hammer man. But that movie is like it's just like all of the kind of brutality is so concentrated. And this movie, it's so like lurid and kind of gothic.

[01:08:31] You know, there's something like it kind of revels in it in a different way. Maybe that's part of it. Yeah. Like it really kind of licks its lips over some of this stuff. Yeah. Whereas you were never really here is pretty mopey. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, right.

[01:08:45] So, yeah, he interrogates the Hotaka. Right. In this scene, he uses his hammer. You get that. To pull his teeth out. Yeah. First, you get that great moment where he like turns around and there's the hammer and he gets the dotted line.

[01:08:56] Like that's the guy's bodyguard or whatever. Right. Like we don't even see him hit him with a hammer. He's just like working in the hallway. That is so good. And so like fucking French New Wave or whatever. So like delightfully out of.

[01:09:10] That's a moment where Tarantino must have like jumped out of his chair. Oh yeah. Exactly. I'm just like, that's like the square. Number one. But then number two, I feel like is Tarantino is probably like, fuck, this guy actually

[01:09:17] puts the hammer in the tooth in a close up. Yeah. Like I couldn't do that in like Reservoir Dogs or whatever. Tarantino always does that thing of like the best movies made since I started making movies.

[01:09:29] He always has this qualified list of like, well, from the moment I become a filmmaker, I view films differently. Right. And I feel like this is one of very few films he cites that was made since he became a director that he is jealous of.

[01:09:41] Where he's like Battle Royale, Matrix, this, like these are the movies where I was like, I don't know how the fuck these guys did that. Right. Yeah. That dotted line moment makes me think of Looney Tunes. Where I wanted it to be like hammering coyote. Yeah.

[01:09:56] Like two mashups or whatever. A crazy thing in the documentary, just a tiny little thing. They were talking to the actor, the hotelier about that scene. And he said like, it wasn't painful at all.

[01:10:14] It's just a sponge they painted silver and cut into the shape of the back of a hammer. And then they cut in the shot again. And it's crazy where if you're looking at it and you know to look for that, you're like, yeah, that no way looks real.

[01:10:26] Right. But in the moment within context, you get so caught up on it. And it's such a tight close up. It's not like they're cutting away from it quickly. It's like tongue is like there kind of flapping in the shot. Yeah. It's so fucking nasty. Yeah.

[01:10:40] And it's rigged with blood spurting out and all of this. Yeah. Tooth stuff. I mean, I don't like tooth stuff. The only thing that's worth is like eye stuff. Eye stuff is really nasty. My biggest. Yeah. Eye stuff is the worst for me.

[01:10:49] I have come to feel better about eye stuff because I'm just like, for some reason, I've seen enough of it that I'm like, this is fake. Because there's just always that moment where you're like, now it's fake.

[01:11:00] You know, there's a bunch of goo getting squirted out or whatever. I don't love it. To be clear. I love having eyes too. I love having eyes. And also one time, you know, I got LASIK like a few years ago and LASIK is like the most

[01:11:10] body horror shit. That scares the shit out of me. Yeah. No, it really like it's like 20 minutes of just like full on Cronenberg awfulness. And then, yeah, it was a really just emphasized for me how bad eye stuff is. Don't want it. Absolutely. But yet pulling teeth out.

[01:11:27] I don't know. Don't like that at all. Fingernails get me. Fingernails. Yeah. It's rare to see some fingernail stuff. When you do, it's usually really, really horrible. What's the movie? There's some big film where they do fingernail torture that I feel like I watch a reasonable amount.

[01:11:43] I saw something recently, too, but I can't remember what it was. Super Mario Brothers movie. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, right after this pretty much is he tells him he was put in prison for talking too much. I feel like that's a big revelation, really.

[01:11:58] But after this is the hammer fight. The two most famous things about this movie, apart from the twist, are in the first sort of like 40 minutes of the movie. Yes. Like the octopus and the hammer fight.

[01:12:08] It is a fascinating thing where like this, this is a movie where in theory recommending it to people should be difficult because you don't want to spoil any of it. Right. But then there are these like couple of extreme things that happen early on that no way have

[01:12:25] to do with any of the twists or turns that you can just pitch to people. This guy fucking fights a bunch of people with a hammer and he eats an octopus live and they're like, what's it about? And it's like, I can't tell you anything.

[01:12:37] I mean, the thing I love about the hallway fight scene beyond just that it is one take. It's very well done. It's just like it's just it's so awkward. You know, it's it's just there is this people who have vague ideas about how fighting works

[01:12:50] and maybe some experience but like still are not, you know, like John Wick, you know, martial arts master. It's not like we programmed into a computer the puzzle of like a man moving through 12 people with such balletic grace or whatever.

[01:13:06] No, it's just like a bunch of people charging at each other. I mean, and then being out of breath, sweaty guys. Some of the guys are obviously more scared than others halfway through and they're just like reluctant to try it.

[01:13:17] And then I had forgotten that he gets like stabbed halfway through and they're all like leaning around being like, is he dead? And then he like lurches back up. Trance. Which we talked about in the podcast. Oh, that fingernail stuff.

[01:13:29] Yeah, I knew there was something we talked about recently. That's a fingernail. You know, that's a wild movie. I think it's pretty normal. It's about normal. Yes, that is the single biggest influence of this movie.

[01:13:42] I think even though you're saying it's very different than John Wick, I'm like, I do think there is a long tail effect of this sort of like you want to just watch a person move through a space. Right.

[01:13:52] And and even just the lack of cleanness of the choreography of just like this is more behavioral and and their actual kind of character beats within it. I still feel like this is kind of what people are striving for all the time. Yeah.

[01:14:07] And a bunch of people have tried to rip it off or pay homage to it over over the years. But to the extent that like the hallway fight has become its own thing. Yeah, right.

[01:14:16] Very much like put a lot of people in an enclosed space and then you have like atomic blondes like we did that on a staircase or whatever. You know, like we're going to find different versions of a enclosed space.

[01:14:25] The Marvel Netflix shows would each have one per season. That was basically the big moment. Yes. Daredevil had the most. Yeah. I'm sure Iron Fist had one because I watched all of that one. Yeah. The elevator opens up and his smile.

[01:14:39] And then to cut to then the elevator opening again. To not give us another action sequence. To be like, you get it. The arrow box that I got is the elevator. That's cool.

[01:14:51] And it's like the box is split vertically down the middle and you open it up and then it's just him. It's pretty it's pretty good packaging design. Something else I appreciate. You know, we talked about he does look cool. He gets to do cool action stuff.

[01:15:04] He gets to beat up some dudes in the beginning, you know, randomly just to try out. But I like that even though it is established that he has been like shadowboxing and punching

[01:15:12] a wall for I don't know what 10 of those 15 years or something like some long time that really his like superpower is just like this intense determination and not caring about anything else.

[01:15:23] You know, like that is the thing that actually gets him through this is just a full willingness to dive into a group of like 10 dudes and be like, let's just get through this. He needs to know why and he needs to have his revenge.

[01:15:37] How is it then revealed who his captor is? You know, as how do we then because he comes in pretty soon after that reveals himself to him. Is it after that fight scene where he helps him get the cab and then he's got a bucket

[01:15:49] hat on and he thinks it's just a friendly pedestrian. And he's basically like, look, if you can figure out why I did this, yeah, I will kill myself. Yeah. If not, I will kill me. Yeah.

[01:16:03] Also, like that first scene where like he picks him up on the sidewalk and puts him in the cab. He does his own smile, like his own like sinister smile. And it's just like framed like very deliberately that you don't see the top of his face.

[01:16:14] So this is a real battling of like broken smiles. He is very frightening. Yeah, it is. My favorite handsome. Yes. Very, very attractive. It's my favorite narrative conceit of this movie is just like you assume it's going to

[01:16:25] be a film where he's spending two hours to get to the answers. And instead, like halfway through the guy is like, it's me. It's me. And I want you to know it's me. And now I'm testing you. I'm not hiding from you.

[01:16:39] And the film can cut away to him. You know, we're not keeping him narratively in the shadows. I've set up this game. Yeah. But now even outside of the controlled prison environment, you're still within these this system I've developed.

[01:16:56] Every time you cut to like his henchman briefing him on the updates and whatever, and you're just like, what is it this guy's trying to make happen? To what end? Yeah. Yeah. His weird penthouse apartment that's also just filled with hench people all the time.

[01:17:09] I mean, a nice blonde henchman who's kind of the number one. Yeah, he's a good henchman. Like he's like a peroxide blonde henchman. Yeah. It's always good to have one of those guys where you're like, you're your guy who's like incredible at fighting. Right.

[01:17:22] Who's like in a track suit or so. He's got kind of like a thing. Yeah. That guy's gonna die last. Like if I'm doing action. Right. He's got that great final moment where he just starts weeping. Yeah. He's honestly really, really good.

[01:17:34] I don't know the actor, but him. Yes. At this point is when he has sex with Mido. Right? Yeah. No, I'd say the sex scene is uncomfortable the first time. It's very uncomfortable even before you know it.

[01:17:52] She is in physical discomfort and keeps on communicating that she is actively uncomfortable but wants to do it for him. And also even before they have sex when she is like, you know, we will have sex eventually.

[01:18:04] I will give you I will sing the song so you know that I'm ready. Yeah. But also it may still fight you. You've just got to keep pushing through which is an incredibly disturbing thing to say as a preface. All this is because she's like hypnotized. Right?

[01:18:19] Like is that the implication of all of that? It's very strange. Now, of course, it's also intentionally disturbing, I feel like because it's going to be played at him later. Right?

[01:18:32] Like if it was it was a very like conventional sex scene, it would not like it needs to hit in this insane way at the end of the movie. Insane way is the point.

[01:18:40] I mean, you could just have it be a romantic sex scene in which they're saying I love you. And if you replay that, that still is. It would be really weird. But I think it's just it's all part of the like complete kind of like alien quality of

[01:18:50] the movie. The fact that when it's played back, it's her saying like I'm in immense pain is that much worse. Yeah. And then like kind of wailing. Right. But I'm doing it for you. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And he still looks like a complete freak to be clear.

[01:19:04] He looks horrible. I don't mean to shame him. Yeah. Right. But he looks very bad. I appreciate that even I'm forgetting the name of the villain. Even he is disturbed at this point. Going up to this point. Yeah. Like, oh, do you think they're in love already?

[01:19:21] Like, really? Like, was that just like all it took is kind of putting them together. You find out later, like they could hypnotize him to the point of getting them to meet each other. He was hoping they could orchestrate the events to make him fall in love.

[01:19:34] And you sort of get the sense that he's like, that's like four months ahead of schedule. That's like kind of fucked up. It happened this fast. He's not aware of his powers. Yes. So then right. He's eventually going to figure out what it is.

[01:19:47] Now, does he recognize this guy right away? No, he doesn't. He doesn't at all. I mean, he didn't know this guy really. Right. That's the thing. Right. He just saw him one time and said something. And that's all it is. Right. By the way.

[01:20:02] He set this chain of events emotionally he has no concept of. You said the thing about our villain threatening to kill himself or promising he will kill himself. If you figure out the mystery, I will kill myself.

[01:20:11] But the part of this is that he had heart surgery and he has a pacemaker and he asked him to install the pacemaker with a kill switch and a remote control so he can at any time

[01:20:21] if he wants to push the button and just fucking detonate his life immediately. But that's all like a red herring. Right. Yeah, it's made up. It is. It is made up. He pushes the button at the end of the movie before the guy is shot. Right.

[01:20:35] And it triggers the tape recorder. I mean, the thing is, though, that seems totally reasonable compared in the scale of all of the other things that happen in this movie. You're like, of course, a doctor would do that for him. Yeah. Why wouldn't he want that? I'm what, 38?

[01:20:46] You know, fine. I think also another important point that it never quite like come like cemented for me until I saw this most recent time is that like he doesn't know that he's witnessing incest.

[01:21:02] He just thinks he's seeing when you see the flashback, he's like, he's just a girl. He knows he's just girl. He knows. And she's hooking up with a guy. And like that is the rumor. Like it's not like the rumor was ever like this brother and sister. Yeah.

[01:21:15] He is not aware of the accusation he's making, essentially. He has seen something like much more ruinous, but actually all it takes to kind of destroy this girl is a rumor that she was hooking up with someone. Right. She got a phantom pregnancy or a hysterical pregnancy.

[01:21:34] And thus they thought, you know, it was an incestuous pregnancy and she killed herself. And that's why he's doing all of this. And that's what's going on. Yes. Oh, boy. Right. And so as punishment, he has tricked him into fucking his daughter. That's right. He is.

[01:21:53] And so it's like this movie builds to a final half hour. That's all basically in this like spa apartment. Right. Well, she's being held in the Miller's lair by one of the henchmen at his or her grimy place. No, she's back at the hotel room. Where is she?

[01:22:11] Yeah. So, uh, like, uh, Desu takes her to the prison, the hotel prison, because he thinks that now the prison, the hotel guy is on his side, like the enemy of my enemy. So he's like, this will be a safe place. Right. His hand. Oh, right.

[01:22:27] There's the right. There's that whole sequence also where the hotel guy's about to kill him. Right. And then gets paid a giant suitcase of money to not do it. And then later they get his hand delivered with a ring on it. Yes. Um, so...

[01:22:38] And she says something to him when he's now got the fake hand that his hand rotted. Right. But they gave him the ring. They're like, we took the ring off. Here you go. Sick. Yeah.

[01:22:49] But so that's why he's like, this will be a good place to keep her. She'll be safe here. Yeah. And just good memories. Good times. Right. Exactly. She loves TV. She'll just like being here. That's what my pandemic apartment felt like. I got the same.

[01:23:00] I had the same thought. It's hard not to, you know, think about being locked inside. Like sitting there getting delivery and watching TV. And that was, you know, obviously our experiences during the pandemic were exactly like Desu's experiences as an old boy.

[01:23:15] The last half, I just feel like you're watching this movie and you're like, there will be some kind of epic combat or something. And instead, this movie just completely subverts expectations every time of like, you're not going to know the twist.

[01:23:28] And then he's like, oh wait, I think I figured out the twist. Yeah. Oh, you reminded me. Yeah. I knew this guy. Or I saw this guy. And like then, and then so you're like, oh, okay. So we figured out the mystery here.

[01:23:40] I guess now there's just going to be a final showdown. And say he shows up at this guy's insane loft with water. Sure. I just think it's a cool set, you know, with the, the, the shell, you know, the things

[01:23:56] that open and close were filled with clothes, you know, the, yeah. He has an incredible wardrobe. Also his shower is kind of in the middle of the place too. I like the vibe. He's like, what do you mean?

[01:24:05] Why does the shower need to be in a special room? He's kind of like loft living is the way to go. A tight tush. And then he's got a tattoo of a knife pointing down to his crack. Yeah, yeah. It's a tramp stamp basically. Yeah.

[01:24:18] But as you said, uh, uh, his, his closet is like four pillars. It's like Darth Vader's anti-chamber thing or whatever. He steps in the middle of it. It splits apart. Kind of unfolds it. Yeah. Um, and he's basically like, yeah, you figured it out.

[01:24:32] But what you haven't figured out obviously is that I brainwashed you into, you know, having sex with your daughter. So this purple box inside is a photo album. It starts with pictures of him and his kid and his wife, and then her getting a little

[01:24:43] bit older and you just immediately are like, Jesus fucking Christ, you know it. And I think he does a really good job of playing that. He knows it right. Like the terror with each page he flips as you start to see her look more and more like

[01:24:57] the woman he met until you get to the photos of them together. And then here's the thing. This performance, which is astounding, is a really wonderful. It reminds me a lot of we talked about William Peterson in Manhunter where like this is a

[01:25:13] guy who's just gone right from the moment the movie starts before things even like he's already completely dead, right? He's dead inside. It's a thing I think Jeremy Strong is incredibly good at doing. Succession just ended. So it's top of mind.

[01:25:26] But there's so many of those scenes where you're just like he is a man just dreamed of life. He is so traumatized by what's really good. Right. The kind of like vacant. Right. You know.

[01:25:37] And I think that performance and all boy from the time he gets out of imprisonment. I think he has that really well down with spurts of mania on top of it. Right. And then this reveal happens and you're like, oh, I thought he was doing poorly before the

[01:25:54] degree to which he just completely like collapses behind the eyes after this, you know? Well, and especially because right before there's this moment where you're like, you don't need to go to the apartment like you could just go, you know, like you guys could

[01:26:06] just go off like you're you don't need to finish the story together. He's got his answer. Yeah. And he is like more alive. I think his hair may even be brushed. Yeah. Like, right.

[01:26:17] You know, and you're like, oh, you are starting to become a person like aside from just a revenge monster. Yes. Yeah. And then in contrast, then when he just like shatters. Right. Right. And it's just everything.

[01:26:29] It's like it's the like the seven stages of grief all in fast motion. Right. It's bargaining. It's anger. There's only five stages of grief. Yeah. A couple in there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He really takes us on a journey. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he really goes there first.

[01:26:48] He's like, hey, I'm sorry. And, you know, the villains are like, well, I kind of was hoping for more than that. And then he's like, I'll be your dog. I'll like, you know, I'll slap her all over. You'll do whatever you want. The guy is like getting there.

[01:27:00] You know, prefer that. He's like, fine, I'll cut my tongue out because he gets a phone call from her and she's like, hey, they handed me this box. Should I open it? Yeah.

[01:27:08] Which is that's like another layer down of like, oh, now he just seems another part of him just died inside the prospect of her finding out. What does he need to do to prevent her from opening the box? So he cuts out his own tongue.

[01:27:21] I mean, that's what I did think of that. Like, it's got the same kind of vibe of just like you really don't want to look in there, but you're probably going to.

[01:27:29] I do think I like Brad Pitt and I like the film Seven, but I think of that moment in Seven as kind of like you're like Pitt had a ceiling to his skill. Yeah. It's like, what's in the box?

[01:27:45] You know, like where it's sort of on the edge of parody. What are you doing? It's very watchable. It is very watchable. And the moment is so gripping. Yeah. Whereas this guy really sells me on like, yeah, I believe it.

[01:27:55] This guy's like, I got to lose the tongue. He has never been so afraid also in his life. You know, honestly, hard to think of a worse situation to be placed in in that moment. Yeah.

[01:28:05] That's the great tragedy part of it too where it's just like, I've imagined a scenario so complex and fucked up. Yes. You can't believe it. The whole story is just about this scenario. Yes. Stuff will happen, but it's really that I thought of something so crazy. Right.

[01:28:21] And the movie will end there. The story ends there. And of course, as opposed to eye stuff, which Oedipus, you know, went for eyes. He does not want to. He goes for not tooth stuff, but mouth stuff. Yeah. This is a real mouth stuff movie.

[01:28:35] Oedipus, he's crazy, that guy. He's like, oh no, married my mom, killed my dad. Eyes gotta go. Bad luck. I learned about Oedipus too young. Yeah. Someone told me like the plot of Oedipus when I was a kid and I was like, what? He takes his eyes out?

[01:28:54] Yeah. That really distressed me as a kid. And this movie distressed me as a grown man, which is what I am. And yeah, then fucking, you know, Woojin kills himself. He plays the, as we said, pacemaker doesn't work, just turns on the...

[01:29:07] Plays the tape, makes him listen to... The tape and Woojin then reflects on his sister's suicide in a very extended and kind of distressing flashback of him like holding her. Right. And the thing he remembers about like, wait, someone, she died falling off a bridge by accident. Right.

[01:29:25] Who took the photo? Right. And then you see the flashback of him desperately trying to keep her from falling over. And then he shoots himself. Well, yes. So he's got his tongue taken out, right? Yeah. Which he's doing as an act of, I don't know, sacrifice? Penance, whatever.

[01:29:46] Sure. Yeah. And then you get this odd effect of just like, well, now I have an insurance policy. I know for a fact I will never tell her that I'm her dad. Right. It's impossible. It can't be done.

[01:29:58] You cut to him in the middle of like a snowy forest. He's with the hypnotist lady. And he's like, hypnotize me again. And you almost think, oh, is he trying to forget that any of this ever happened? He still wants to know her.

[01:30:13] The end of the movie is the two of them together. Him smiling. He can't speak. And the last scene is so weird. It's they're surrounded by mountains. I think they shot that in New Zealand. Weird. So they had to like travel somewhere to have snow and mountains.

[01:30:27] So it just it really looks so removed from all the other context. It is very dreamlike. Well, and just the complexity of him smiling. And then like he sort of goes into this grimace right at the end. And you're like, how much does he remember?

[01:30:44] Like, you know, what is his state? Did this work? I just love that. Is his intent, I want to forget all of this so I can date her again without feeling conflicted? Or is it I want to be clean of all of this?

[01:30:54] I think date is definitely not the word. No matter what's going to be happening. I wouldn't call it dating. They're not going to like go to the movies a couple times. It's very, it definitely implied they are going to continue to have a romantic relationship. I think so.

[01:31:06] They will be bonded. They're going steady. Yeah, he does give her his pen at the end of the movie. He carries her books. He's an old boy, so he's got pens. That's true. She's his best gal. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's been from my school.

[01:31:23] Funny story about my school. There's this one guy who had sex with his sister. I totally forgot about this. Somehow this memory is getting unclosed. Oh no! I mean, I do love as much as there's just so much weirdness and like surrounding this,

[01:31:35] the idea of being like, he makes that list of enemies, you know, early on where he's like, and a lot, he comes up with a whole bunch of people of like all of the people I've wronged. But the idea is clearly a piece of shit.

[01:31:45] He's clearly wronged a lot of people. But I do appreciate the idea of just being like, you just really mess up someone's life without knowing in that like just tiny way you didn't know. And that like person just hates you so much.

[01:31:58] The flashback to how offhand the comment was. Yeah, right. Where his friend's like, that girl? Are you sure? And he's like, I don't know. He kind of shrugs it off. He's not like, no bro, it was definitely that girl.

[01:32:09] Yeah, he is very much like, yeah, I saw them kissing or something. Yeah, there's nothing in it where you'd be like, someone would really need to atone for that. I forgot to mention in the flashback of them fooling around that she takes out her hand

[01:32:23] mirror and she watches like basically she wants to see her own facial expression reacting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, there was a lot going on with her. We only see her very briefly, but we learned she was both very devout and also, yeah, had some stuff going on.

[01:32:41] Had some stuff going on. Yeah. It's powerful. Yes, for sure. I feel like it's just one of these movies that's like sending the audience out in silence and like stunned silence. Yeah. That's the vibe I kind of remember. It's audacious. It's very audacious.

[01:33:00] And the most audacious thing to do after that twist is to sort of present what is quote unquote a happy ending for the characters. Right. Like they figured it out. They get to not be haunted by the terrible thing they're going to continue doing. Yeah, of course.

[01:33:14] And she never gets roped in to even have a choice in the matter. Nope. Nope. She's just lacking in agency. I mean, everyone in this movie, I guess, is hypnotized and lacking in agency.

[01:33:25] And the villain is, you know, just lost in this thing that he will never get over. He does have a lot of agency. He's rich and he does stuff. He's able to make a lot of shit happen. But he's literally obsessed with one moment.

[01:33:39] His life basically was ended in high school. Yeah. Yeah. And that's why he kills himself, I assume. He's just kind of like, I did it. Done. What else is there for me? So here's my question. Does this movie actually say something that you feel is profound about vengeance?

[01:33:54] For me, no. And I think this is maybe why I'm more icked out than sort of affected by it. Whereas I do think like, not to just go back to it, but like, You Were Never Really Here

[01:34:06] is a movie that I do think gets at something profound in the human condition about the worst things in the world. Right? Yeah. And trauma and the reason why we deny horrible things happening, because it actually takes

[01:34:20] more to engage with the worst aspects of humanity than just ignore them. It eats at your soul. Right? I don't know what this movie is ultimately saying outside of like, it's a son of a bitch. He'll get you in the end. I don't know.

[01:34:38] I mean, like, it's just got a lot of interesting ideas about like, can you... So what he did was wrong. He slept with his sister. He essentially sort of molests his sister, the villain. Something generally frowned upon.

[01:34:54] She is the older one, they make a point of saying, right? So it's unclear what the origins of that relationship are. There is a strange dynamic to them in general. And he did this and it's like, you know, there's this like crazy sort of literary, like highfalutin

[01:35:09] very Greek tragedy-esque concept of like, can I force my, you know, my sin onto others? Like, is that the like craziest, most pure vengeance imaginable? Where it's like he kind of is purging himself of what he did by making someone else do it. It's a very interesting concept.

[01:35:28] It's very interesting to think about. But yes, I do struggle with old boy getting past just like the absolute mania of it. Yeah, I would say the same. I think also we never get the sense that he feels bad about, you know, in fact, he makes

[01:35:43] a point of saying that he doesn't like they, you know, that aside from... He certainly is not repentant about what he did. Right, right. Like, I think... Woojin. Yeah, he is kind of like, we loved each other.

[01:35:53] Like the problem was society, you know, like that, like it was... But he does know that making someone else do it will not make them happy. Right, exactly. And also he will not be able to live with himself immediately. Right, yes.

[01:36:05] But he just, I mean, he clearly has nothing. That's it. He says like the only thing he was living for is this guy he kept, you know, in a filing cabinet for 15 years. He is rich and successful.

[01:36:16] It does feel like, I mean, none of this is like colored in, but my takeaway is he became a billionaire out of spite just to have the resources to fuck with this guy. Right?

[01:36:28] And like, it's mentioned that they come from money in the beginning, but you see him even... Sure, they went to a nice school. Yeah, like, but you see him even... There's like a part where they're walking into his penthouse apartment and the guy who's

[01:36:37] with him is talking to him about some business matter. And you're like, oh, you're still doing business stuff. And then meanwhile, you're embarking on the end game here of your, you know, decade and a half revenge plot. Yeah, I have also trouble.

[01:36:50] I mean, I think there is something emotionally in this that feels very resonant to me of just kind of like that, that incoherent and also like ill-advised rage, like all consuming kind of blustering rage, like this thing that kind of drives these characters despite any

[01:37:07] rational like any rationality. Is it worth it to do the most fantastical form of revenge imaginable? Right, right. At the expense of... But like, yeah, this is, it's so outrageous that I have a lot of trouble connecting to it emotionally in any sense, in any deeper sense.

[01:37:24] I just... How do you feel about Greek tragedy? Like how do you feel about like Medea or... You're like one of those masks that's kind of frowning. Not the smiling one. I don't know, like, how do I feel? Like, I feel okay about it.

[01:37:36] Whenever I watch Greek tragedy... I give it a 7 out of 10. Yeah, yeah, B plus. No, like whenever I watch, you know, like a restaging of Medea or Oedipus or... Like I also have that, like where I'm walking out where I'm like, oh, it's interesting how

[01:37:50] they staged that or what an interesting performance that person gave. But I'm not walking out being like, man, Medea really... You know, obviously you can think, I've studied those a little bit academically. You can think about all of that and all the archetypes that like linger throughout literature

[01:38:05] and all that. But I'm not walking out exactly being like, I really identified with Oedipus when he was fated to this doom. Well, yeah. Well, I was just going to say, I think there are things where you're like this kind of

[01:38:19] apocalyptic grief of like killing your children, you know, in rage. And then also at the same time, like, you know, like howling your grief about losing them. Like there's something there that as extreme as that is. It's so primal. Right.

[01:38:33] As extreme as that is feels still more like understandable to me than saying like... A guy hypnotized me to fuck my daughter! Yeah, exactly. Like, oh no! I was in a hotel! I married my mother and I killed my father. Out go the eyeballs.

[01:38:47] Like, I just like, it's just not. There's something there that is just not. This is clicking something for me, though. Is it eye stuff related? No. Well, it's like... This is clicking stuff for me. Just go Sam Neill.

[01:39:00] I don't think this movie really has anything to say about like revenge and the human condition in like our real world. I do think this may be this movie is more in conversation with the way revenge is presented dramatically. Sure.

[01:39:17] I mean, if anything, this movie isn't commenting on something in us. It is commenting on the way like the revenge-o-matic, which is like such a fucking sturdy subgenre. The grandiosity of it. Right.

[01:39:29] It's the easiest way to fucking set up a movie is this person did this thing to this other person. The rest of the movie they got to cut through whoever they do. What they did was so bad that you totally get why...

[01:39:38] And also they deserve to do whatever they want in this. They are totally justified. Right. And we like as audiences will accept some pretty perverse things on screen. Right? If we kill John Wick's dog, a clearly reprehensible act, then we will watch him murder one million

[01:39:53] people and continue to root for him. Right? 100%. And this movie is sort of cranking all of those elements up to the extreme where it's like the cause of the need for revenge, the form the revenge takes, what he does to get through to the worst guy.

[01:40:07] Everyone in this you're just like none of this is like fun. Right. Even though this movie does have some genuinely like thrilling sequences, he's kind of like perverting the revenge thriller to speak to like, you know, if the stripped down version

[01:40:23] of this were happening in real life, you would find it upsetting. But if you put it on screen, it seems fun. So the only way to make it upsetting on screen is to make it the most upsetting series of things that have ever happened, period.

[01:40:35] To show you this is all bad. I think that's a really smart read. And I think like especially the way the movie I would say the first like half of the movie

[01:40:43] is pretty fun to watch if like, you know, and then the second half is like not fun to watch and increasingly unfun. But yeah, the way especially like one, the motivation is so unsatisfying when you actually

[01:40:54] learn what happened, but also that then the deflation at the end of like any anything resembling satisfaction. There's no coming back from this. Because even like the revenge thrillers that are a little bit morally conflicted, it feels

[01:41:07] like the way it's morally conflicted is the end of the movie, the guy finishes his task and he sits down in a chair and then he's like, what next? Right. Or like, what did I do? Right. Who knows? Can I go back? Can I go?

[01:41:18] Well, even the stuff that's talked about in this movie was like, can I go back to a normal life after this? And then by the end of this, you're like, yeah, I don't know. I don't know that you should.

[01:41:25] But this is fundamentally there's no way to go back. And he instead is like, I'd rather forget what I know to go back. Yeah. In a way that's really unfair to her. Right. I might have just talked myself into liking this movie 20 percent more than I previously did.

[01:41:39] I think that's a great read. I agree. I agree. Yes. And I also the thing about engaging or like liking this movie is I really do respect it as a totemic thing. Absolutely. It's like sort of just like a signpost on the road of cinema. Yes.

[01:41:54] That actually did really change things. I know that was not the intention. It's like Park Chan-wook was like, all right, I'm going to freak these Americans out. But that's always the case with these movies.

[01:42:04] The movies that are huge sea changes in any industry, in any culture, in any genre or whatever are never coming in with the like, we're going to blow it all up. No, often it's more like, can I get away with this? Right.

[01:42:14] I was just trying to do my little weird thing in the corner. This film was, I'll just give you a little more context before we play the box office game, a slightly troubled production. It was budgeted at 2.8 million. It ended up costing five.

[01:42:27] So I think it was like really over budget, over schedule. It was supposed to be like 40 some odd days and it went up to 70 something. Right. Yeah. The producer in the documentary said like... 48 days to 72. Right.

[01:42:39] And he's like, in my mind, the main two jobs of the producer to keep the movie on schedule and on budget. So in that sense, I absolutely failed as producer of Oldboy. Right.

[01:42:49] I think his producer too, Lim Jung-hyung was sort of the enforcer and the yeller and all that. I don't know. It seems like it was a very dramatic set. They did say... There's a lot of fighting.

[01:42:59] There was some like round table with a bunch of the crew members talking about the park and they were like, he's not like a yeller. He's a very intense person. Sure. And they are on set all the time, kind of terrified of him and like desperate to earn

[01:43:12] his approval. But he's like never wielding his anger or his judgment around. And then one of the guys goes like, yeah, the worst moment, the moment you're trying to avoid above all else is him just sighing. Right.

[01:43:25] If you do something or present an element to him or he calls cut and he just goes... Right. Jesus fucking Christ. They're like, he never chews you out. But that cuts deep. That's enough. And obviously he seems to just command a lot of respect.

[01:43:40] So people want to make him happy. The big one-er was initially not going to be a one-er. They switched to one-er out of laziness. They were like, can we just do this in one shot rather than having to set up a bunch of shots? Love that. Love that.

[01:43:54] And he says, Park says like the fatigue we felt making this movie, I feel like is everywhere on screen. Like everyone does feel exhausted. I'd agree with that. It's his first collaboration with Chung Chung-hoon, who is his cinematographer going forward. And what else?

[01:44:14] They have a very, very close relationship. I mean, and now he's like Hollywood guy who shot like Uncharted. That's insane. It is really weird. The green thing, you mentioned that. And then this film was a huge hit. Sympathy vs Vengeance had done badly.

[01:44:31] Little Boy was a big success. And then of course, Ghost of Cannes, after experiencing success in Korea, wins the Grand Prix. Lots of rumors that it was the choice for The Palm. And he had submitted Mr. Vengeance to Cannes and gotten rejected.

[01:44:48] So it was like a real turnaround for him, I think, in terms of like, you know, whatever. Is the American theatrical release that fall? No, it's in 2005. Things really were slow back then. You know what I mean?

[01:45:01] Tartan, of course, riding high off of certain other, you know, Asian releases like Audition or whatever, the Asia Extreme label. They put it out in Britain and then it makes it to America in 2005. But like, it was not a big hit in America at all.

[01:45:19] It made like a million dollars and like a very divided reviews. That was probably seen as a success in that moment. What's the most we can get out of a movie like this?

[01:45:29] But it gets a lot of reviews in America that I feel like he often gets, which is basically like this is too visceral or too stylish. Right? Don't you feel like that's often what critics, you know, contemporary critics would react to him?

[01:45:41] He was also he was like also Mr. Violence, right? Like that was for a long time, like he was the stereotype of like, that's like what his thing was, which is never, I think, how he would describe himself. Right.

[01:45:55] But like Manolo tore this movie to shreds, saying like too snazzy, you know, essentially. But you know, it did. I think I really do think its its tale was very, very long. Like, oh, yeah. Especially that the home video, the DVD market.

[01:46:13] It was like this was like classic of that. Right. This is a movie that really benefited from like peak DVD. I think that exact like bell curve of like 2004 to 2007 is when suddenly like DVDs were omnipresent. Prices got a lot cheaper.

[01:46:32] People started having like much bigger collections, like more casual film fans weren't owning their three favorite movies. They were owning like 30 movies they like. Right. Because things were suddenly like eight dollars at Best Buy. And yeah, this is a movie that just exploded there. Right.

[01:46:49] So let's do the box office game for March 25th, 2005. Old Boy opening at number 48. Basically a full year after Con. Yeah, exactly. So I was yeah, I was so fucking hyped up for this because I was like, why aren't they letting me see this goddamn movie?

[01:47:05] Well, so wait, you didn't want to see a hilarious family romantic comedy about a young man meeting his fiance's family? March 2005. Well, I did see this also that same weekend. Guess who? Guess who? This week, number one, 20 million dollars. Yeah, not good. Bernie and Ashton. Yes.

[01:47:23] The dynamic duo. It's a shame they never got to retain. Have you seen Guess Who? I have not. The, you know, racially swapped Guess Who's Coming to Dinner with more gags and more Ashton Kutcher. Far more gags.

[01:47:37] And I mean, like, I think of Ashton Kutcher as a Sidney Poitier- Absolutely. As figure. Absolutely. His nobility, his grace, his gentle touch. I also saw Guess Who in theaters. I do not remember it very well, but I don't remember liking it. I remember being a bad.

[01:47:49] I saw, I think I saw every Bernie Mac vehicle. I was very pro-Bernie Mac. Me too. I loved Bernie Mac. One of the finest people to ever live. And an underrated actor. And he never really got the vehicle he deserved. No, he certainly got vehicles.

[01:48:05] And he like worked and he had movies. Yeah, like Mr. 3000, Soul Man. Even like Head of State where he's like a pretty strong second lead. Yeah. Love Bernie Mac. Guess Who directed by Kevin Rodney Sullivan. Don't really. No. Screenwriter. Okay. All right. Number two. Somewhat underperforming.

[01:48:25] A sequel to a major comedy hit. Scooby Doo 2 Monsters Unleashed? No. Underperforming sequel to a major comedy hit. Female star. Miss Congeniality 2 Armed and Dangerous. Armed and Fabulous. Sorry. I feel like that, this is the moment where Sandra Bullock's career seems to be in the toilet. Yep.

[01:48:44] I mean, she's in the same year that she is in Crash. And when she was in Crash, it kind of felt like, huh, like she has to do something like this. You know, like kind of... So racist that she falls down a flight of stairs.

[01:48:54] She is so racist that she falls down a flight of stairs. And then... Is Lake House the same year? The Lake House is fucking IMDb with its fucking like putting the producer credits first. Get the fuck out of here. Is 06. So next year... Premonition. Premonition is 07.

[01:49:10] And then in 09... Yeah, this is a bad run. In 09, she made a certain proposal. And then she won us all back. Yep. How do you feel about Miss Congeniality? One or two? You know, I don't think I ever saw two. One is pretty good. One is pretty good.

[01:49:23] Yeah, like I feel pretty positive towards one. You know, she's always been good at kind of physical comedy. The whole thing with Sandy Bullock to me is when I was a teen, I did not appreciate her.

[01:49:31] I thought of her as kind of like a B-list star, B-tier star, whatever. And you rewatch most of those movies now and you were like, this is very, very solid. Like, you know, two weeks notice or whatever. And then you're just like, this is good.

[01:49:44] There's that thing after The Heat was such a big hit and they were like, well, obviously sequel and Sandra Bullock is like, I am so burned by Speed 2 and Miss Congeniality 2, I will never do a sequel again under any circumstances. Good for her. Yeah, I'd like that.

[01:49:57] Go for it, Sandy. And also good call. We didn't need The Heat 2. No, he's fun. It would have been an easy paycheck. And she was just like, I'm not fucking doing that again. All right.

[01:50:06] Speaking of sequels, number three of the box office dropping from number one the week before... Scooby-Doo Monsters Unleashed. No, it's a horror sequel. And weirdly, it's directed by the director of the original film.

[01:50:18] It's The Ring 2, a film that is one of the most incoherent Hollywood films ever released. Like one of those things where you're like, oh my God, like no one did a pass here or whatever. So weird. The first The Ring is like improbably great.

[01:50:33] The Verbinski Ring is a truly good movie. Phenomenal. Yes. And then when they had Nakata do the... Oh, that's kind of a clever idea. Bring him in. Sure. And I think it's partly that The Ring ends perfectly. Like the story is resolved so well.

[01:50:49] You know, there's not a lot of space for a sequel. The Ring also has like the bonus final act where you think the movie is resolved and they're like, there's another 30 minutes to go, which kind of functions like its own sequel.

[01:51:00] But then how do you tack a sequel onto that? I also feel like, you know, The Ring, there's a lot of stuff in the Japanese Ring, which is a great movie, obviously, but that they kind of discarded certain elements of like

[01:51:12] psychic powers and all of that in the Americanization. And I think, yeah, you know, I think those could have... Ring 2 is like, Sissy SpaceX here. She's got a bird's nest on her head and she's crazy. You know, it's a lot of like whatever.

[01:51:25] And that movie kind of did okay, but it like it did not do the business of the first. Okay. Number four, animated film. Terrible. Oh, fuck. Home on the Range? It's not a Disney. It's not a Disney. It's not a Disney. It's not a Disney.

[01:51:40] It's not a Disney. It's not a Disney. It's not a Disney. Is it a DreamWorks? Yes. Oh, no, actually, no, it's a Fox. It's a Fox. It's a Fox and it's not an Ice Age. Not an Ice Age. No, it's a one off.

[01:51:50] It's a one off and it's a robots. Robots. I rewatched robots recently. Why? I don't remember why. Why did you do that? I don't remember what prompted me. How was it? It's bad. What's interesting is, I mean, I've watched a lot of Disney movies.

[01:52:00] I've seen a lot of Disney movies. It's kind of the last Robin Williams doing a voice in a cartoon. Yes. The design in that movie is unbelievable. Okay, it looks incredible. It's all William Joyce. Right. It's written by David Lindsay Abair. Sure. It has this crazy stacked cast.

[01:52:24] Sure. It has this crazy stacked cast. It is one of the only animated films certainly. of that size I've seen where I'm like, I think they fucked with this in the edits where

[01:52:31] Where you can tell like entire plot lines were lifted out, they put pop songs over it that sequences were not designed around. It just it feels similarly kind of incoherent. Character design is great. Haven't seen robots. Ben have you seen robots? No.

[01:52:45] Number five of the box office comedy with a big star who endures to this day. Scooby Doo 2 Monsters Unleashed. No! He's the biggest comedy star in Hollywood. Old scoobert. That movie came out in 2004. Fuck. That's actually a check. Really? No, this film is sort of a forgotten thing.

[01:53:02] It is a family friendly vehicle for an action star that was a hit. It is the pacifier. People forget that the pacifier made money. Was a big titty tip. It was a big old hit for Vin Diesel and yet it was kind of like hmmm.

[01:53:16] You lost the juice huh buddy? This was when he went crawling back to the Fast and Furious. Not that long after this. It's a real uh this is four years before he goes crawling back. Yeah well what happens is there's something in between right?

[01:53:29] He does Babylon AD which is the real Nadir and I feel like there's one other thing in this era I'm pretty good at. He doesn't work much back then. Yeah he doesn't. I remember it was. Riddick is the year before. It's Find Me Guilty 5 or 6.

[01:53:40] Oh maybe yeah that's in there. Yeah okay so it's Find Me Guilty and then Babylon's the one where he's done. Babylon AD is 2008 and that's one of those movies that I think sat on the shelf for a while or whatever. Yeah he really just didn't work much. Yeah.

[01:53:53] And Riddick really kind of blew it up for him. Right 6 is the Tokyo Drift cameo. Oh absolutely. I appreciated you know Fast X is a disaster but I appreciate your defense of his commitment in your review which I do think is important. Oh yeah he's acting so hard.

[01:54:10] He's acting harder than anyone. He is that's true. He's not phoning it in in that way. No no. Some things were phoned in that way. Absolutely. Almost everything. On a fucking tin can phone. Right.

[01:54:20] I mentioned this in the review but that part early on where he's like at home looking out the window and he hears a sound and he like whips his head around so much that people laughed in the audience.

[01:54:27] Like yeah he's undeniably got a lot of power on screen and he commits very hard to everything he does. The pacifier though is a weird example of what you're saying like a hit that hurt someone's career hit where it's like this. This is a big bummer.

[01:54:41] It makes one hundred and thirty million dollars or whatever sold entirely on his name. It is popular and everyone's like OK we're done with you. Number six is hitch a huge hit obviously. Number seven in the Bruce Willis thriller hostage which I definitely saw in theaters.

[01:54:58] I remember I think my dad asked me like hey was that any good and I was like the opening credits are kind of cool and he was like that's that's a bad sign. Like you think that it was the best thing to remember.

[01:55:09] I think that came up in a box office game semi recently and your hint was it's a movie where the title is just a thing and I guessed it in one because it's the most fucking first draft title ever. Hostage. Sounds like a Jason Bateman comedy.

[01:55:26] I'm a hostage. He's doing the Jason Bateman poster face. You've also got ice princesses that Michelle Trachtenberg ice skating drama with Disney film falls in love with the boy who drives the Zamboni. Be cool. Yeah we'll cover it someday probably on the fucking now more Leonard more Leonard.

[01:55:43] Yeah I can close and number 10 at the box office has just won the Academy Award for Best Picture million dollar. What's it up to with this 94 and it's going to make 100. So it's basically done. Yeah. Well Allison anything you want to plug. No. No.

[01:56:02] I want your writings great. I want you to read everything you write. You know you can follow my dog on Instagram. Follow the dog on Instagram Sammo the dog. Everything you're writing over on New York Magazine and Vulture. Your fast extra view I thought was particularly good.

[01:56:15] And I said this to you backstage when we were at the film spotting show but your your top gun piece. Is this all a death dream. I take that is usually exhausting but take that fired up Bill Simmons.

[01:56:28] We talked about the amount of people I know who are not caught up in the fucking film Twitter world who cited that. Did you read that fucking piece. It is iron. The logic of that theory whatever you hate the word theory these days because it becomes

[01:56:41] a loaded but I love the logic of that argument is across barriers. Yes. Honestly the best thing I wrote last year. It was easily incredible piece. I highly recommend it. It was a good movie. Yeah. Talk about rock solid. Yep. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:56:58] It's kind of the Scooby Doo to monsters unleashed over time. Allison far too long since we had you on before. We'll have you on again sooner. Yeah. It was a pleasure. Thanks for coming Allison. Talking about oh boy with us on blank check.

[01:57:14] I don't know why I'm doing this. The oldest of the boys. Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate review and subscribe. Thank you to Marie Barty for our social media and helping to produce the show.

[01:57:26] Thank you to AJ McKee and Alex Baron for our editing JJ Birch for our research lane Montgomery in the Great American novel for our theme song Pat Reynolds Joe Bowen for our artwork.

[01:57:37] You can go to blank check pod dot com for links to some real nerdy shit including our Patreon blank check special features where we do commentaries on film series and other sorts of bonus stuff.

[01:57:47] We're doing the Oceans franchise including the Rat Pack and the eight with the three Soderbergh's in between. And we'll be doing an episode on a little drummer girl. Put TV on the Patreon side where it belongs.

[01:58:03] Start watching that free membership on the Patreon new episode old episodes unlocked from three years ago every 10 days. What's coming up there Ben. We have hanging up with Sonia. Our friends here. Great. Tune in next week for sympathy for Lady Vagabonds. That's right. Yep.

[01:58:23] And as always never ever ever open a box.