Stoker with Emily St. James

[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] He used to say, sometimes you need to podcast something bad to stop you from podcasting something worse. Very good. Hello. That was my best Mia Wasikowska impression, which was just very quiet and delicate. I am happy to be here. I'm your Mia Wasikowska expert now.

[00:00:43] If you ever do Crimson Peak, I guess I'm locked in. Oh, yeah. Fuck. Yes. Wait a second. Alice. Alice and this? This. I fucking love Mia Wasikowska. Have we covered a third Wasikowska? Has there been a Wasikowska you weren't talking about? Wasikowska.

[00:01:01] I'm trying to adjust in real time with each additional time I say it. She's from Australia. I feel like it's been anglicized to some extent. That is true. That's why I thought split the difference, it's Wasikowska, but you think it's Wasikowska.

[00:01:13] I mean, that's true. I think that is like the Polish. I'm Polish. This is a mini series of us not pronouncing names correctly. I also have some Polish ancestors. Right. Which in my defense, I don't pronounce gremlins correctly. How do you pronounce it?

[00:01:29] I'm going to go a little hard on the R. Gremlins. So let's see. Okay, so you're saying like we did Alice in Wonderland, of course. Yeah. We're doing Stoker. I'm saying is there any other movie she has appeared in that we've covered on the podcast?

[00:01:45] Is Emily two for two right now? Two for two. Which I hope she is. Yeah, I think yes. I think those are the only two. Of course, if we do Cronenberg, she's in Maps to the Stars, I believe. Jarmusch confirmed 2024. Right. If we do Jarmusch or Del Toro.

[00:01:59] Oh, right. Yes. No, Crimson Peak would be an early. That's what you said. If we did Mira Nair, she's in Amelia. Young Mia. Really? I thought you were saying she was young Amelia. She's playing one of the sort of female aviators who are inspired.

[00:02:13] You know, like who she meets. She plays one corner of the Bermuda Triangle. That's right. Please don't land here. I guess we could do, I don't know. I don't know. Please don't land here. I guess we could do Gus Van Sant. She's in Restless.

[00:02:31] That seems like a stretch for us at this point, Van Sant. Yeah. We'll do Psycho one day and then maybe we can talk Van Sant then. We could do Van Sant through the franchises. What other franchises does he have? Well, he, hmm. That's a good question.

[00:02:45] Has Gus Van Sant done any other franchises? Wasn't Elephant part of a trilogy? Yes, the Death Trilogy. Elephant, you know, Last Days and Paranoid Park, right? I had a weird dream that there was a new Elephant. Like, they like... Like Elephant Legacy.

[00:02:59] I was sitting there watching and I was like... I don't think there's any funny way to pursue this conversation. No, but my dream was me at a screening. I'm not like, critics liked this? No, I guess it's Jerry, Elephant, Last Days is the Death Trilogy. Right, correct.

[00:03:11] I would do that. Well, Elephant would be a really tough hang as a commentary. Jerry and Last Days would be more fun. Sure. Elephant is less fun. You always call it the Death Trilogy. More of a walking around. It's a Puzzle and Murmurs trilogy.

[00:03:27] It's a lot of walking around. It's a lot of puttering. People do die. I should not be dismissive. It's a tough movie. I haven't seen that movie in 20 years. Which one? I think it's a masterpiece. I thought it was a masterpiece when I was a teenager.

[00:03:41] I've never watched it again. I'm terrified to ever watch it again. At the time, I saw it and was like, this is one of the best movies. And I've never watched it again. I mean, Emily, on Oscar Watch, a lot of people had Elephant. You called them sickies?

[00:03:51] Because you would have your avatar. That was your little profile picture. Exactly, but then a lot of people had signatures that they would custom make. No, no, no. You hit the forum. You fucking tried to big dog me. I'm not big dogging anyone.

[00:04:07] It's not like that's the only forum that had that. The Palisades Toys Forum had that, David. And I was posting up a storm there. The collapse of Twitter and other social media platforms. You guys need to start a forum. I think it's called V Bulletin.

[00:04:19] Yes, I think so. I wonder if I still have the like... We disown the subreddit. If I would need to do some cardio again. I just saw David's eyes light up at the idea of fuck, could I still post the way I used to?

[00:04:31] Am I still supermod on Oscar Watch? Yes, I believe so. Every time there's an election, I go there because it's the one place I know how to process bad news for some reason. And they still talk in the NBA thread that you started in 2012. So that's your legacy.

[00:04:47] That's your legacy. That will be the headline when you die, David. I started in 2012. Damn, I mean I did a lot of stuff on that forum. Most of it embarrassing. None of it. I do want to say at the time I knew you as someone from the UK.

[00:05:05] And so when I started talking to you on AIM, you mentioned at one point that you had grown up in New York and I literally said, wait, what? So. Used to be the opposite. I was the UK boy who actually had a little New York going for him.

[00:05:21] He's using it. I'm using the tape measure. I left a tape measure on David's desk and it's now been worked into the episode as a cool prop. I know you've retired the bit, but at the time I didn't know I was doing the opposite

[00:05:33] of the bit. So I feel like it was a really great long lead setup. You know? Yes, that is true. Just to sort of explain to you things that have changed since the last time you've been on the show.

[00:05:45] And this is stuff that has not been released on main feed yet, so you couldn't know. David doing a prop sound like foley work with the tape measure is clearly him reacting in insecurity to the fact that Ben has now become a slapstick guy.

[00:06:01] Is the slapstick gone? No, no, no, no, no, keep it away. Keep it away. Introduce our podcast. He bought a literal slapstick. Also Ben got his ear pierced. You guys are fucking on the bleeding edge of this shit. I think people are really going to put together how

[00:06:17] out of order this series is by the amount of which episodes have a lot of Ben earring discussion on them. I feel like this is a little bit later and so the earring will move all the way. Can I see it? Yeah. That's so good. I love it.

[00:06:35] You look great. I'm glad you love it. Bad boy 2.0 error. You're saying that David I'm not going to bring up the earring every episode to every guest, but what podcast is this? This is Ben's earring with Griffin and a disastrous rebrand we've settled on for some reason.

[00:06:49] I'm Griffin. I'm David. It's a podcast. My earring. That's Ben's earring. It's a podcast. The title has changed, but still 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 products

[00:07:05] they want. Sometimes those checks clear. Sometimes they bounce baby. And sometimes they get pierced. I was going to say the exact same thing. We were both rushing to the same finish line there. This is a mini series on the films of Park Chan-wook. It is

[00:07:19] entitled I'm a podcast but that's okay. That's right. Overruled losers. Democracy. Yep. And today we're talking about Stoker his to date only English language film. Yes. He's done English language television, but this is the only film he's made in English language. Yes. I'm returning to the show

[00:07:37] returning champion. One of our favorite people. Hello, Emily St. James. Yes. Thank you so much for being here. I'm so glad to be here. I'm thrilled. I had the thing going of bad movie or good movie, bad movie. And now I'm thrilled

[00:07:51] to break it with. I just come on for me. I watch a cascade shit. Yeah. That's the one thing I do now. Yeah. Yeah. You need a hook. You need a hook. This it does fascinate me how divisive this movie is. Yeah.

[00:08:03] I love this fucking movie. I love this movie too, but like the people who don't like this movie are still angry about it. Ten years later, like fucking Stoker. Yeah. Don't get me started on Stoker. This was a very polarizing movie. I think

[00:08:15] I think very, very, very stylish movies are always that kind of polarizing where it's like, well, I can tell this is stylish, right? So it's doing a thing, right? And if so, if the movie, the story doesn't buy for you, you can

[00:08:27] really easily lean into kind of like all style. No sub you know, all season. It's almost your Malkovich sun-dried tomatoes analogy. Yeah. Please remind me. Oh yes. Or I called him a sun-dried tomato actor. He is a sun-dried tomato actor. Right. And you're like, sometimes that's not the

[00:08:43] sandwich you want sun-dried tomatoes on. It's going to overpower. You might just want one or two on your sandwich. And sometimes Malkovich is going to put 40 on your sandwich. Right. This movie feels like the Speed Racer of abusive family movies. I think that's fair to say.

[00:08:57] Yeah. The editing is so similar to Speed Racer. I was watching it last night with some friends and we were like, yeah. Richard Rountree does live commentary over most of the dialogue scenes. And look. What? In the hands of someone, I like

[00:09:11] this movie a lot. I love this one. But I do think in the hands of somebody else, this movie could be just the purest nonsense. Like just so bad. Maybe not so bad, but just like a real bit of twaddle, to use an English

[00:09:27] expression. I like the script, but you're also I don't mind the script, but it's a bit of a genre Oh, it is. And you watch it and you're just like, God, they were smart to get him to do this. Yes. I just think, you know, whatever.

[00:09:39] I don't know who your replacement level director is. No. I used to cite Ratner, but I feel like Ratner is now like too problematic to actually Right. Who's the non-problematic Ratner? Your C-minus director. Louis Leterrier. But like, Louis Leterrier makes action

[00:09:55] movies. Like Louis Leterrier is probably not going to make a tense Hitchcockian thriller. But David, hear me out. What if Louis Leterrier made Stoker? Made Stoker Legacy. I think the Russo brothers would make this movie. They would. And it would be, I don't know what it

[00:10:09] would be. It would be something. But I'm now convinced that they are terrible filmmakers unless they have really really strong other stuff around them. Yes. You know what I mean? Like not just replacement level. I think they're bad. Yeah, but that's what's wild is

[00:10:23] you're like, they are the directors of like the most successful movies of all time basically. And now we're like, are they competent? I genuinely like their community shit was so well directed. This is the thing. Yeah, I think there were just a

[00:10:35] I'm really starting to feel like there were a lot of other people helping. I think Beyond the fact that they had a good script on their hands with that stuff. I think it's the showrunner thing. I think it is like I think they are very good if someone

[00:10:49] else is giving them the vision. Anytime they're like, who are we as filmmakers? You're like, they have nothing to say. So now they've become moguls. Yes. The mogul thing I hate. Right. But I'm like if there is a Feige if there is a Harmon, you know

[00:11:03] if there is a Hurwitz or whatever They broke through under Soderbergh. So like Soderbergh was like shepherding them and then they kind of had a dry period. They welcomed us. And people said, I'm busy that day. Can't find it on the map.

[00:11:17] I'm going to go somewhere else. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it just yeah, sure. If the Roos has made Stoker, I don't know if it would be very good. No, I was thinking about this script was on the blacklist. It was like

[00:11:27] really high and it's just like I don't know. I love this movie. I think it's a good script. I don't I can't imagine like Hollywood executives reading this and being like, yeah, fuck. Yeah, that's great. This is the thing with the blacklist, right? You have

[00:11:39] to think about it's being voted on less by executives and more by readers right? Sure. Who have to read every fucking thing that comes through. So if you read a script that is just compellingly weird, it's going to jump straight up your list because you're like sitting

[00:11:55] there fucking like falling asleep at your desk reading a million scripts, even if they're functional, they're all probably a little bit similar. They fall into clean silos. And if you read something like this where you're like, what the fuck is going

[00:12:07] on? You're not going to forget the Stoker script. It's also a script where you have three roles where you can just imagine, you know, like three opportunities for a zillion different actors to pop. Because this was very nearly There is no like bland role in Stoker.

[00:12:21] This was very nearly Carey Mulligan, Colin Firth, Jodie Foster. Oh yeah. Carey Mulligan, Colin Firth. That's what's wild. And you're like, Firth's too old for that. Three very different, all three of them are older than the three people who ended up in the movie. It ages the whole

[00:12:35] thing another like seven or eight years, if not ten. Yeah, that would be like post and educated, like Carey Mulligan's in her mid twenties. Right. But you're like right. You could do this exercise where you could just keep on coming up with three people to play those

[00:12:47] parts. Is this is this the best movie that was big on script, that was big on the blacklist, that wasn't all like social network was big on the blacklist, but that was already being made like kind of like this and Passengers and the fucking what was the Juno?

[00:13:01] Lars and the Real Girl. I'm trying to think of other ones that were like the top script. All right. Some famous blacklist scripts. Yeah. There's too many though. Give me the number ones. Give us some highlights of the number one. Also, just give people a sense of

[00:13:13] what the blacklist is. It is what I what I was sort of explaining. It was this thing that was started by this guy, Franklin Leonard. That was like we should make a list of the best unproduced screenplays to give them like their flowers. And it was

[00:13:25] it started as a poll of like an email list of one hundred assistants and readers at studios and production companies and going like, what are the ten best scripts you read this year? And then the list is which ones got the most votes. And it

[00:13:39] started like mid 2000s and then it became a thing where like if something is the number one blacklist script of the year, it gets produced here. But that's honestly not true at all for a moment. It was here. This screenplays on top of the blacklist starting from

[00:13:53] 2005. The 2005 number one was Things We Lost in the Fire, which was turned into an honestly underrated movie, but not a hit. Obviously. Yes. Then something called the Brigands of Rattle Borge Big L for the black list on that one. Then recount, which of course was turned into a

[00:14:09] movie film. Yes. Then the Beaver, a famous. Yes. Yes. Blacklist number one. You can't believe how crazy this thing is. Yes. A perfect example of you read that script and you go like, holy fuck. I certainly haven't read anything like this. That was

[00:14:23] a period where I was auditioning a lot, not to humble brag when people still wanted me to be in things or at least were interested in considering me. And I remember reading that script and being like holy shit, this is the best script I've ever read.

[00:14:35] And in retrospect, you're like, it's just weird. It's very weird. He's got a beaver. He talks through the beaver. But in a year where you're reading like 100 scripts. No, 100%. I remember hearing about that script and being like, this could be such a great movie. And then it came

[00:14:49] out and I was like, this is actually kind of fucking weird and I don't want to see it at all. But also was an example of like every single fucking pairing of director and actor possible before they landed on Mel Gibson and Jodie Foster. Wow. Okay.

[00:15:03] Next, The Muppet Man, which is a famous Jim Henson biopic, right? That's never been made. Horrendous. Have you read that script, Emily? I have. So the guy famously was like, yeah, I didn't do any research. I just wrote a narrative of what I thought his life

[00:15:17] might have been. Sounds good. Yeah. It's really bad and people read it and they were like, what interesting life Jim Henson had. And I'm like, bullshit. And not even like a creative reimagining. Just sort of laziness. Then, okay, a script called But to say, Muppet Man, Disney bought

[00:15:31] To prevent it from getting made, we're going to keep moving. Okay. College Republicans, which I believe is like a Karl Rove biopic. That very nearly got made. That was going to be a Dan O'shia thing. I forget who's going to direct it. The Imitation Game, which was made.

[00:15:45] Wins an Oscar. It did win an Oscar. Stoker's better than that. Incredibly bizarre screenplay winner. A little movie called, I'm seeing here, Draft Day? Was number one on the blacklist? Yes, sir. Only reason it got made. The year after that was a film called Holland,

[00:16:03] Michigan, that I think is finally being made. Oh, wow. Starring Nicole Kidman, of all people. Then, okay, something called Catherine the Great, which I think is a biopic about the Queen of Russia. Never got made. But that was one definitely where like a lot of big

[00:16:17] A-list actresses were, you know. Something called Bubbles? Is that about Michael Jackson's monkey? Correct. Yes. That nearly got made. I remember that one floating around. Taika Waititi was going to do it as a stop motion film. That sounds just wonderful. And then, when whatever it's called, Leaving Neverland

[00:16:31] came out. Yeah, they were like They were like a month away I think from starting animation. There is a film called Blonde Ambition that was a Madonna movie, I believe? That's the one that she was going to direct. Right.

[00:16:43] But after she rewrote it. I'm sure that's definitely going to happen still. No, it's never happened. A movie called Ruin, which I think was like a World War II movie that Gal Gadot was attached to at some point. Okay. A movie called Frat Boy Genius. Don't know what

[00:16:55] that is. It's about a frat boy genius. Oh, it's about Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel. Something called Move On something called Headhunter. I just want to shout out Cauliflower, which was on top of, I think, the 2021 list by my friend Dan Jackson. Okay. And Pure

[00:17:11] is the most recent. Like, obviously, most of these scripts have not yet been made because that's how it works. But some of the other ones, I guess, were in the top. Argo was on that. Yes. It was a Blacklist script. Blood Diamond. Yes.

[00:17:21] Charlie Wilson's work. I don't know. I feel like there are a combination now of like, now there are a lot of films that I feel like the scripts are written. They don't put it in a production because they're waiting to get the Blacklist pump, even though

[00:17:33] it's going to get made. Yeah. And then there's a couple per year where you're like, this is an actual discovery. This is a movie that would not have gotten greenlit if not for The Shine. Yeah. And Stoker was sort of like a real

[00:17:45] discovery. People were like, what is this? Well, and then has this whole narrative about this, you know, whole narrative of like, well, Wentworth Miller, you know him from Prison Break. The prison is tattooed on his body, but he wrote it under a pseudonym.

[00:17:59] So when it's on the Blacklist, that's when people found out. He got it up there without his name. Yeah, right. That's how good it is. Yeah. Now I love Stoker, but I'm glad we can do some Prison Break talk. Let's just pencil it in.

[00:18:11] Now, we once, Emily and I remember... Emily just unfurled the blueprints of her prison, by the way. Wait, have you introduced her guest? Emily St. James! Yeah. That's not my name. Sometimes I just lose track. It's like brushing your teeth every day.

[00:18:23] At this point, I am best known for doing this podcast. There's so many people who are like, I love your blank check appearances. I should list your credits. Of course. No, that's fine. Owls in Wonderland, Silence of the Lambs. There's a few others. Yeah.

[00:18:35] Why am I forgetting the other ones? Munich. Yeah. The Thing and Christmas Carol. Christmas Carol! That's a chaotic... Those Zemeckis episodes are just like a blur to me. I don't remember those at all. Some people say those are our best episodes. Okay.

[00:18:51] I guess you want me to lose my mind. One of the best moments, the standout moments in the Back to the Future episode where I forgot to cut out a ten minute bathroom break. People were like, this is funny that they did this. The ultimate bend it.

[00:19:07] I remember we used to say that the pilot of Prison Break was the best thing Brett Ratner ever directed. Yeah. And then Talented came out. I was like, I'm gonna buy that. Prison Break season one? No. Not good. Prison Break's episode one to thirteen

[00:19:23] good. I think after thirteen where they had gotten a pick up and they were like, fuck, okay, we can't have them break out until the finale. They clearly built the story to be like, well, if we get cancelled, they can break out at thirteen.

[00:19:35] And then at thirteen they're like, we're gonna do it. And then there's like a pipe in the way and they're like, fuck! I remember there being like eight more episodes of them being like, how do we get rid of the pipe? And you're just like, okay.

[00:19:47] How many seasons did they ultimately do? Five. And did they do a reboot or did they threaten to? They did four in the original run. They did a fifth season reboot. They also did a movie called The Final Break. Oh. Wasn't there a threat

[00:19:59] of doing like Prison Break Legacy a couple years ago and Wentworth Miller said like, I will never go back? I think so. Yeah. He seems like a, yeah, someone who maybe doesn't love everything about the process of making television, right? Beyond that, I think he hated the experience

[00:20:15] of being famous. He's talked a lot about that. Because he was also obviously in the Flashiverse. Yeah. I feel like he... He seemed to enjoy that more. Enjoyed it, but it would be like he was a lead in Legends of Tomorrow and then very quickly

[00:20:27] he was like, I don't want to be a lead. Like, I'll recur. Right. He was that weird thing. I think we invoked this in some episode recently where they gave him like a series regular deal across all the series. And they were like, in totality

[00:20:41] you will end up doing a little bit under a season's worth of episodes, but we'll spread them out over different shows. The thing about TV right now is that Prison Break would be like an eight episode limited series. It would probably be a stronger story,

[00:20:53] but I feel like we're all nostalgic. Maybe just speaking for myself, for the time when you get to episode 13, there would be a pipe because they have to keep going for indefinite period of time. You and I, I'm sure, are very nostalgic for

[00:21:05] TV scheduling, which no longer matters. But you know, back... No, you too. Emily and I just used to talk about this a lot. Just because I wasn't on the Oscar watch. Who's going to get Tuesday at 9? You know, like, you know, whatever. And yeah, Sweeps Week.

[00:21:19] They still do sweeps? Do they do sweeps? But like it's just kind of, we don't know about it anymore because who cares? When my baby was born just before November, I was so fucking mad that she wasn't born in Sweeps Month.

[00:21:31] It was just like, would have been a big event. Sweeps baby. I watched when I had a child. Those really dazed first six months. I watched like... During the Zemeckis era? Six or seven seasons of Grey's Anatomy. Like, you know, we just put it on. I watched ER.

[00:21:49] Medical drama time when you have a baby. 100%. And like, I remember just some episode of Grey's was very dramatic and I was like, this must have been a Sweeps episode. And my wife was like, what are you talking about? And I was like, God, this is

[00:22:03] so boring to explain. But, you know, I just feel like I guess that probably still does... Like I'm watching Abbott Elementary and they kiss. It still does happen. I should be putting together like, oh, this is a Sweeps week episode. I think it happens on the procedurals

[00:22:15] more than anything else. Right. That's when you do a crossover. I think CBS hits sweeps big. David, you started to say this and I shut you up because I said you need to save this for Mike, but you just built the transition point. Oh, my wife? Your wife.

[00:22:31] This being the weirdest miniseries so far of your wife walking in and saying, what are you watching? Well, it's more like, look, I only have so much time. So yes, sometimes I'm like, look, I have to watch this movie tonight, like doing a podcast on it. Sure.

[00:22:47] And usually either she will watch with me or she will like look at her computer or whatever and sort of like pay some attention. But with Park Chen-Wook, with Stoker, actively disturbed, obviously. It's not a chill movie at all.

[00:23:01] Was she actively watching or was she coming in and out? With Stoker, she was paying more attention. I would say, oh, it's easier to grab. It's like, hey, that's Nicole Kidman. Hey, you know, I know Matthew Good, blah, blah, blah. And then yesterday I had Oldboy on

[00:23:11] because we're doing Oldboy soon. And at one point, not spoilers for Oldboy, but she just looked up to see, you know, a hammer claw in someone's teeth. Yeah. And I was like, you might not want to. And she was like, what the fuck is this?

[00:23:25] And you were like, hey, don't worry. It has a very unhappy ending. It has one of the most famously fucked up endings of all time. She definitely looked up for the octopus eating, the hammer tooth removal, and then she was like, you know what? I'm going to bed.

[00:23:39] I'm leaving the room. But anyway, no, Stoker, that was the thing. I was like, honestly, Stoker, one of the more watchable Park Chen-Wook movies in terms of just chillness. It's kind of gripping. It's hard to look away from. I mean, so sexy. It's the fucking

[00:23:55] the style. The style of this thing. It is grabbing. Emily, you're a big Park Chen-Wook fan in general. I feel like you were stumping big for him during March Madness. Very often, in fact, the person you stump for has won. I just have my finger on the pulse

[00:24:11] of Erika, I gotta say. But Demi was one you were pushing really hard. Yeah, I pushed Demi in Zemeckis and then Right, you were also a big Zemeckis person. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think that year of the whatever it was, the four brackets,

[00:24:27] the thing where I picked Joe Johnston. That year, I got everything wrong. Well, you knew Joe Johnston was. I knew Joe Johnston wasn't going to win. I would love to do Joe Johnston, to be clear. Did you also sort of like shift your votes over to

[00:24:41] Carpenter at the point Joe Johnston was eliminated? You're going to go pee? You guys talked. Yeah, I did push Carpenter. I'm going to ask you very quickly. What is the worst thing that David ever posted on the Oscar Walsh Farms? Can you think of like the worst prediction

[00:24:57] he ever made? Oh my God, let me think. He was, oh God, he very much was like There's no catastrophically bad, like me turning to my dad and saying that pay it forward is going to sweep the big five.

[00:25:09] No, the thing about David was he was always like very detached and like kind of above it all Even back then? Yeah, yeah. I will say this. He at the time hated the Lord of the Rings Hated is strong, but

[00:25:21] he was like, these are three out of five. Wow. Of course they're classic. I've seen that. Was he dismissive of the prospect of them winning Best Picture? Kind of, yeah. He was like when it was clear Return of the King was going to win

[00:25:37] he was like, you know, I'm not happy about this but it's happy. That's a beautiful point. The thing we were talking about I had to pee. I forgot to pee. No, of course. Joe Johnston, wait. Oh no, what were you guys talking about?

[00:25:49] Shifted your votes over to Carpenter. Yeah, yeah. This year I think I was boosting Satoshi Kohn at first, but then I was like I was also very big on Park Chung-Wook. He's one of my favorite. He was on my long list of people I thought about picking in

[00:26:03] 2021, whatever year that was. And then David was so excited about Joe Johnston It was a fun, chaotic pick. It was chaotic in its normalcy. You know? It's one of those things where you're like Joe Johnston, what are you talking about?

[00:26:21] And then you look at the filmography and you're like I watched Nutcracker and the Four Realms for the first time last year and had a blast. Had a blast. David, thanks for the residual payment. I hope you liked your two cents. Joe Johnston, just to be clear

[00:26:37] Honey, I Shrunk the Kids Big Garantor. The Rocketeer Great Bounce. Good movie. Underrated. Vindicated. The Page Master I think he might be a co-director on that one He directed the live action. But that counts. Weird movie. We do that on Patreon. Yeah, that sounds fine. Jumanji Franchise starter

[00:26:55] Took a while, but yeah. October's The Guy. Underrated gem. Sure. Jurassic Park 3 on Fairly Maligned. Good movie. You and I both agree. The best of the sequels. Yeah. I think I agree with that too. I think I do. Hidalgo. Okay. Whatever. There's always a Hidalgo.

[00:27:11] Colossal bomb. Big bomb. Post-Lord of the Rings. Failure. Sort of a thing. Ifravigo. The Wolfman. Famous bounce. Yes. Disaster. Captain America, The First Avenger. Sort of becoming maybe the best Marvel movie in retrospect just for its smallness. It's going up there. Something called Not Safe

[00:27:29] for Work is tough. Don't know what that is. What? Is that one of the mini movies about killing people in an office park? Correct. Yeah. Okay. Some kind of office set action thriller. Weird. And then Nutcracker. Yeah. Ben's just bored. Ben's just

[00:27:47] fucking buying candles online right now. He keeps on threatening to retire and has like a couple times called what his final film would be and then every time he does that the movie doesn't happen. So he was supposed to do the fourth Narnia movie.

[00:28:01] There was the announced Honey I Shrunk the Kids reboot that didn't happen because Moranis pulled out when the pandemic hit. I feel like there's one other one where he was like, I'm making this and then it's... Honey I Shrunk the Kids. You said Kids.

[00:28:17] Oh, shorthand. He's rebooting Kids. And I got really excited. No, no, Ben. I'm sorry. Wait. The rebooting Kids. Good news. But Joe Johnson is on it. Ben, I'm very sorry. He was rebooting Harmony Korine's Kids with Brick Moranis. What if he did Honey I Shrunk Harmony Korine's

[00:28:31] Kids? That would be... That's the fucking Emily. If you went and pitched that tomorrow, Disney would give you $20 million and then hire AI to write it. But that is the exact fresh take we need on both franchises, which let's just say Kids has been really

[00:28:47] fucking up as a franchise. Are they going to do a fourth? I guess there's no way they can do a fourth Narnia because like all the kids are old now. They would have to just start again. Now they're saying

[00:28:57] they're going to hard reboot. I think someone just announced they're fucking rebooting it. Don't do Narnia. Just don't do it. Possible Netflix reboot. The three worst words in the English language. I can't wait. I can't fucking wait.

[00:29:09] Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe is like the one of those books that's like vaguely movie-like. Adaptable. The rest of them are just like, what if the Bible was weirder and had more animals? And they don't flow into each other normally so like they don't... It's never...

[00:29:21] It has never lent itself to... What were they going to do? The Silver Chair next? Correct. Joe Johnson was going to do The Silver Chair. There's also like not strong continuity of protagonists. No, they're always swapping cousins in

[00:29:31] and shit. Horse and his boy has a ton of racism. Magician's Nephew is like my favorite of those but it's just like, what if this guy just made a bunch of stuff? That's like the prequel, right? It's like the creation myth. Yeah. Right. Right. Right.

[00:29:47] So we're rebooting Narnia so good news for us. No, Stoker. We're doing Stoker. I remember you in one of your very impassioned well-written sort of Twitter threads making the case for Park when he was proceeding along you made the point of just like

[00:30:05] he is one of the few people who makes movies that are still genuinely sexy and sexual. Yes. And yet not in a way that is off-putting to people. Like The Handmaid's my favorite of his films and it's one of the few movies about queer feminine

[00:30:21] desire made by a man that does not feel lecherous or male gazey in any way really, which is fascinating. I love that he is interested in sort of our lizard brains and how affected they are by violence and sex. Yes. But also he's like very good at

[00:30:41] not making that salacious is the wrong word and not making that feel exploitative. He's like interested in examining that and giving you the joy of violence and sex, but also like making you pull back and be like wait, why am I into this?

[00:30:55] Right. The quotes of like, you know movies make violence look cool. You cannot make violence that isn't somewhat cool and whatever. I do think he is this guy who is able to leave that bad taste in your mouth in the way he wants, but I had

[00:31:09] the thought I was thinking about your thread sort of making that case for the way he's able to depict sexuality cinematically in a way that's kind of unique, especially amongst living directors. But I kept while watching this movie thinking like he can literally make any single

[00:31:29] thing feel like a sex scene. There's the scene in this movie where India Stoker, Miyawaki's character steps into the stiletto heels and is simultaneously extremely sexy and extremely creepy and I feel like that's the Park Chan-Wook Venn diagram. Right. He can make someone peeling an apple feel like

[00:31:47] it's like watching like hardcore pornography. Right. But you know, this is also a movie where someone does a murder and then jerks off in the shower. Yeah, correct. Who hasn't though? Some sort of. Witnesses slightly participates in a murder. Be shy, do crimes. So Stoker, let me give

[00:32:07] you some background on Stoker which is Park Chan-Wook's follow up to Thirst correct? Yes. Right? Thirst is before this? Thirst is certainly before this. We're jumping ahead and never told you that much. Just trying to remember if there's anything. No, it goes Thirst to Stoker. Okay, so post-Thirst

[00:32:23] Park's sort of like, I don't have anything in particular lined up. Maybe I'll chill. Take it easy. Watch Grey's Anatomy. Yeah, maybe I'll throw on some sort of mid-season, mid-run Grey's. Yeah. You know, once Kevin McKidd shows up. Next steamy years. The Axe is then announced as

[00:32:43] his next film. A remake of Acosta Gavras French thriller. Interesting. Sort of political genre film but then that gets dumped. That remains a sort of like I'd like to make that in my lifetime project for him. Like he talks about it like he was

[00:33:03] like during the Decisional Leave French tour. I think he was still like, I still like to make The Axe. Okay. Who knows? In between Thirst and Stoker he also makes short films. He's made a lot of short films. I don't know if you've sort of

[00:33:15] dived into this. Yes. A lot of like sometimes in anthologies, sometimes like basically as sort of ads like in partnership with some, you know, like Apple or something. You know, he'll make a little thingy. Three Extremes. Is that the omnibus he's a part of? Yes. Okay.

[00:33:31] The things he made first was called Night Fishing. He made it with his younger brother. Right. Shot it on an iPhone 4 about a fisherman who catches a dead woman. That was a big like Apple gave him money to prove you could make a good movie

[00:33:43] on an iPhone thing. Correct. Right. Yes. I remember that making a splash. A short film award at the American Film Festival. Okay. The second is part of an anthology called 30 Seconds of Solitude in Year Zero. So I guess that oh, that's like where every film is a

[00:33:59] 60 second movie. Cool. 60 seconds of solitude. Did I say 30? Yeah. So he did that. Okay. So that barely counts. Yeah. And then something else also with his younger brother is called Day Trip. It's an 18 minute short developed for an outdoor brand colon sports. Okay.

[00:34:17] So there's Song Kang Ho. Okay. Collaborator. It's actually the last time they've worked together. Wow. Unless they work together again. Uh huh. I don't know. I don't know. Does he only work with his younger brother on the short films? Possibly. A little condescending. Hey, I'm doing a shorty.

[00:34:35] Yeah. So over to Stoker. Written by Wentworth Miller of Prison Break fame. Captain Cold himself. And I heard the entire script tattooed on his chest Young Anthony Hopkins from The Human Stain. We all remember. Look the same. I just want to note that in the second season

[00:34:53] of Prison Break there's a character named Haywire, very sensitive, who looks at a painting of a boat and then decides to sail to Europe? Across a lake? I absolutely remember that. But the whole thing with the second season of Prison Break was they broke

[00:35:05] out a lot of people. Yeah. And some of them they were clearly like, okay, these guys aren't going to be in the core Prison Break group. So they had to do things like that where Haywire's like, I think I'm going to get in a sailboat.

[00:35:17] He just never appears again. That is probably a show that has aged poorly. Terribly. I can't imagine T-Bag is a character that resonates now. T-Bag, how did he earn the name T-Bag? I mean, T-Bag is sort of like the arch villain in a way, right?

[00:35:41] Like he's a white supremacist, he's a psychopath. I feel like people pitch a lot of guests you should have on the show. Let me just make my pitch for Robert Knepper, T-Bag from TV's Prison Break. Oh, sure. I think he'd be great. In character as T-Bag. Wentworth Miller.

[00:35:55] He is known as the, what's the character called on Prison Break? Lincoln Burroughs. No, that's Dominic Persall. Michael Scofield. Right, they had different last names despite being brothers. The Human Map. He was a Human Map. And then in season

[00:36:09] two they did try to be like, there's actually more to the tattoo! We gotta take I-95 or whatever, you know? It was like the Earth was on it. We never checked the butt crack. Spread those cheeks. Take out a magnifying glass,

[00:36:23] it's done in smaller... It's just one of those classic, like the reveal is in the pilot. Oh, the tattoos are a map. And everyone's like, great reveal. How do you do that long term? And the writers were like, we have ideas. Don't worry, don't worry.

[00:36:37] We got plenty of ideas! He was wearing socks the whole time? What's at the bottom of the feet? So, Wentworth Miller attended Princeton University. Nice education if you can get it. He apparently said he did a creative writing program there and was rejected and sort of

[00:36:59] you know, this convinced him like I'll never be a writer, like I shouldn't even think about that. So into his 30s he was sort of like down on himself as a writer. And then he says, late one night when my DVR was tapped out. Remember when your DVR

[00:37:13] would get tapped out? Yeah. The original I've Reached the End of Netflix? Exactly. I thought, what if I write a scene? Like, you know, he'd always had this idea for this movie. What if I write a scene? Who's gonna know?

[00:37:25] Four or five weeks later I had the whole thing. Wow. And he's like mid prison break run at this point? Yeah, I would assume so. What are the years on prison break? 2006 to 2010 I think. 2005 to 2009. You were close. Okay. And then of course 2017

[00:37:43] for Prison Break Season 5 which we all waited for. It's ended at this point then? Yeah, maybe it's like I'm not sure exactly when he wrote it but his idea is what if I mash up Shadow of a Doubt, the Hitchcock film, which this film is quite obviously

[00:37:59] sort of connected to. The Stepfather the classic 80s trash masterpiece with Terry O'Quinn a very fun movie about a bad stepfather. Remade with one of the Nip-Tuck guys? Yes. The fucking other one, not Doctor Doom. What's the other one called? Dylan Walsh? There you go. From Congo.

[00:38:19] That's all retire. And then a sprinkling of... This is the problem when you come on the show Emily is it's three people who all have this same stupid knowledge base. And then a sprinkling of Dracula essentially. A sprinkling of like oh what if we give it

[00:38:35] kind of a vampiric edge. Bit of a hat tip in the title. Down to the Stoker title. It was funny though I remember just even when this was announced as like the Blacklist breakout, people were like so is it secretly a vampire movie?

[00:38:49] And they had to keep on being like no it's just a tip of the hat. But even throughout all the marketing I think people were like and he's going to turn out to be Dracula at the end right? Right. Some people wondered if it was that

[00:38:59] but of course Wentworth Miller who's one of those guys who have always felt and I say this in a nice way, feels like kind of dumb smart or smart dumb. You know what I mean? It's not about vampires it was never meant to be about vampires but

[00:39:11] it is a horror story. A Stoker is one who stokes which also ties nicely in with the narrative. You can't say he's wrong David. No. There's stoking happening in the film. The person who got me into this movie is David and my mutual friend Genevieve

[00:39:27] Valentine. How is Genevieve? She fucking adores this movie. This is a very Genevieve Valentine movie. Her read on it, she has a very cool read on it as a vampire story specifically but I'm not gonna I don't remember all the incidents. Sure. But obviously right like there is

[00:39:43] there is sort of just a gothic air being lent to everything anyway and so I think you like that title. He writes it pretty quickly and he's sort of at that point was kind of like I just wanted to hand it off. Like I don't you know

[00:39:57] I don't want to direct it or anything or act it. Like I just sort of wanted to hand it off. He says the soundtrack for writing the film was Philip Glass' The Hours score. Makes sense. Classic score. Morning Passages. Uh huh. The Poet Acts

[00:40:09] just naming some tracks from The Hours score. Script gets hot, makes the 2010 blacklist. So yeah this must have been right when Prison Break was over. Sure. Gets a distribution deal. Gottfried signs on. Ridley and Tony's production company. And then he is revealed as Ted Folk. Right.

[00:40:29] The sort of pseudonym. And that's sort of when I feel like the hype on this thing goes like supernova. Yes. Where it's like what? You already have the buzzy blacklist thing then like huge producers are attached and then it becomes this like did you know that he

[00:40:43] This is actually the map guy from Prison Break? Yes. Now if Dominic Purcell had written it that would have blown my mind. Smart potato man. Smart smart. He has also written a prequel script called Uncle Charlie that has never been made. Probably because this film made

[00:40:59] like you know two million dollars at the box office or whatever. So it's not like people are like Stoker prequel. But that's like I'd read it. This is a Fox Searchlight picture which means that Disney now owns it and they're big on IP.

[00:41:11] So Uncle Charlie could get made. Stoker origins. Yeah. Stoker the rise of Uncle Charlie. Okay. So Park Chen-Wook obviously at this point fairly major international name has never made an English language project but I imagine he just had gotten to that point where a lot of scripts

[00:41:29] would probably get sent his way. Hollywood's trying to tempt him over. But I don't even remember there ever being like whispers of like they're trying to get him for this. He's in talks for this. Like it felt like he up until this point in time

[00:41:41] seemed like a guy very happy working in his home country being lured by Hollywood doesn't want to fall for the bait. He says kind of a right place time thing. It comes in as he's finishing thirst. He likes the script. He thinks it's in his comfort zone.

[00:41:59] So it's like yes I'll be trying something new by making an English language film but like it's the kind of story I make. Yeah. And you know he's just intrigued. He also likes much like I'm a suburb that but that's OK. This is

[00:42:15] going to sound demented but he likes that the protagonist is sort of his daughter's age and he's like I'll make a film that she could relate to. I've already found this narrative of Park Chan-wook trying to relate to his daughter through

[00:42:25] movies and her being like dad who what do you think of me. I mean the thing with I'm a suburb that's OK. She's like I made a movie for you and she's like thanks. I was more of a fan of like Pirates of the Caribbean. Anyway. But no

[00:42:39] he likes that the protagonist is a young woman around the exact age of his daughter. Sure. So even though it's an English language script it is heavy on image light on dialogue. Yes. And so that's another reason he's sort of like well this is a quiet script

[00:42:53] I can bring in a lot of visual elements. Well just like. Of course he forgot to do it. This film's lacking in visuals. Yes. The camera never moves. My dinner is Andre over here. When this movie opens. Camera cross fades. When this movie opens

[00:43:09] Basically with me of us a Costco explaining that she's like it especially like extreme responses to her senses. Sure. Sensorial experiences you're like oh this is like his perfect material of just like someone who like everything feels sounds you know more extreme. Yes. Because

[00:43:31] he's so good at that sort of like psychological tactility of like this the surface of something you know the actual texture of a material of a touch. I think look I don't know to what extent the Scots were involved too but that's also kind of a

[00:43:49] Tony Scott thing it's the same thing where like Tony Scott will shoot just a street scene and you're kind of like why is my chair rumbling. You know what I mean like it's just that that the the experience the mere

[00:44:01] atmosphere will be enough to kind of set the noise machine. Park can like have a character and hyper close up like touch a piece of paper and you're like why am I coming. All right. He's a sexual filmmaker and he absolutely is arguably

[00:44:17] one of his most sexual films in a very sexual filmography. They're all pretty sexual. Yes. For not being that for being less explicitly sexual yeah there's like two kisses in it. Yes. It's wild. True. There's not a lot of actual sex murder shower jerk off. Yeah yeah

[00:44:37] obviously this is a very Hitchcock in movie he claims Oh no that wasn't really what interested me but I read part and you know the other deviation is this is probably the first movie he doesn't have a writing credit on because he would usually

[00:44:51] have a writing credit on his movies but you know whatever perfect script. No he did work on the script a little bit. He did talk to Wentworth before it had around a notes he also worked with his his co-writer for the rewrites was Aaron Cressida Wilson who wrote

[00:45:07] secretary. Yes. And then ends up writing the didn't she write something weird recently. Let's look it up. She's a playwright as well. I think she's written a lot of plays. She wrote Chloe. Remember that one. Oh she wrote us Snow White. Thank you. The

[00:45:23] upcoming Mark Webb Snow White yes. She also wrote the girl on the train or she wrote men women and children. It's a mixed bag over here. Yeah but yeah he says that his he says that his revisions were small but whatever I don't know. All right. So

[00:45:39] as you said original three Jodie Foster Carrie Mulligan Colin Firth some cursed rumors about Johnny Depp as Uncle Charlie here and I don't even know what would he have had to go off of in this character when it there's nothing popping on the page that he could latch

[00:45:57] onto and take. Where's Depp at this point. I mean I don't even know. It's sort of like post the tourist. Well yeah because you know this is not a high. This is like the same year as like the Lone Ranger. Sure. This is him because 2010 is Alice. Yeah

[00:46:15] and the tourist highest grossing film ever well and then you have 2011 Rango Stranger Tides right you know Rum Diary right then 2012 is Dark Shadows 2013 is Lone Ranger 2014 is Transcendence. That's where he's really hitting a wall and tourist is 2010 as well Okay but no me and

[00:46:35] Okay so she's been in Alice in Wonderland She's in the kids are all right. Yes sort of a forgotten film. Yeah Good movie. Totally good I haven't seen it. Yeah solid She's in the Carrie Fukunaga Jane Eyre. Yes Not a good movie. I like it

[00:46:53] So she's just hot stuff. I feel like right. She's just she has a fascinating career. There was a semi recent IndieWire piece about her and how like like did you notice that she quietly stepped away from the industry Yeah I feel like she took a few years

[00:47:11] I mean there's just a lot of her. That was the tone of the piece right was like there was like eight years where she was non stop everywhere and kind of was a bizarre movie star for someone who was so quiet reactive she delicate

[00:47:25] Yeah she made the Alice money. Yeah made those two Alice movies. She made a bunch of money and she's like I'm she kind of did the Robert Pattinson thing. Yeah she was like I'm gonna just make weird indie passion project get their things made but

[00:47:37] she you know she was the Rooney Mara of her of her very micro period where it's like if you want someone to play a wounded bird you know micro that was like five years. Yeah yeah. And then she basically was just like I

[00:47:49] like I spent five years just living out of a suitcase. I work nonstop. I did six movies a year and I'm I was exhausted and I didn't know who I was. And she moved back to Australia and she's just like occasionally something gets me off the couch

[00:48:01] I will do Bergman Island. I mean she's incredible. Right that comes to me I'll do it but she's like I'm not really seeking out jobs anymore I dropped most of my representation I'm back home in Australia. It has to really be a special

[00:48:11] thing. I have no interest in being a movie star Yeah she really does not work that often She does have every time she sits back on the court she kind of nails it She had a film a can this year club zero

[00:48:23] Jessica Hausner film that was very polarizing That was why I think she did this piece. Right yeah Um so you know she's obvious casting I feel like Parks very into a short film she made called I Love Sarah Jane Yeah. Apparently that was a big

[00:48:39] one for him. That's the fucking like she's very good at like minimal like not overt expression you know kind of like beneath the surface acting. Is that the Hesher guy? That was a thing that was it was a big fucking splash and it kind of made her career

[00:48:53] and made his career that both of them off of that short which went viral started getting big deals. Was that before In Treatment? What year was that? I think it's the same year basically I think you know I mean obviously remember she was on In Treatment

[00:49:05] She was one of the treat treaties Yes. She was the best part of season one. Right and everyone was crazy about her performance. That was the springboard really. I don't know you keep on reading like I feel like there's now constantly a stream of actresses

[00:49:19] doing press for new movies saying that they also auditioned or tested for Alice in Wonderland and really wanted that weirdly. Right. Burton. Voskouska kind of came out of nowhere to get that part even though like In Treatment was such a good performance and that short had gone viral

[00:49:35] it was like oh you've like never been in an American film before and now you're like the star of a humongous fucking thing She nailed the futterwhacken is what happened in the audition. They did a futterwhacken test for everyone and she's the only one who

[00:49:47] was able to do it without CGI. She's the only one who was able to react to the futterwhacken with anything but disgust. Yeah she held her vomit in and she swallowed it Nicole Kidman I feel like just part of her long run of working with interesting

[00:50:01] directors. It feels like one of those that she says she was just offered the role like you know they saw her out. It makes perfect sense. She's the obvious person who the director was and was like sounds great. Yeah She said in their first

[00:50:15] meeting he said to her about the script like about the character like ever since you've held this baby this baby's never wanted to be held Go from there. Good shit Yeah she'd seen like the Vengeance movie she said she said I do think I only saw

[00:50:29] half of Oldboy because I was like oh my god Forky vibes. Yeah Happy ending though right? Yeah and she was like I'm sure it ends fine Yeah and then Matthew Goode Where's Matthew Goode at this point? I feel like he is the least known

[00:50:45] He's getting kind of hot But he always his career is so I guess Watchmen the whole thing was that Watchmen kind of tanked him in a way because everyone was like you were supposed to play the perfect man in that movie

[00:50:57] and like that's tough to live up to His career is so oddly stop and starty where he just like every five years will get heat again and they'd be like yeah of course why haven't we figured this out yet and then he's never totally like gained the

[00:51:11] full head of steam. I love him I don't know how you feel about Goode. He's so good and he's so hot I think he is good and then sometimes he is incredible and when he's incredible you're like why isn't anyone figuring out how to harness this regularly

[00:51:25] He feels very similar to Dan Stevens to me Yes. He can give a performance where you're like yeah you're fine you're doing an English guy You're handsome and then he'll give a performance where you're like he understood the assignment. You're clapping between every word. Very annoying. And something

[00:51:39] like Matchpoint a movie I know you hate more than anything but where you're just like No I agree. But he's like arguably the best part of it and it's one of those things where you're like this is very easy just off the shelf British rich asshole character

[00:51:53] and he somehow comes at it so specifically that you're like who the fuck is this guy He's not to go off on a whole tangent. He is incredible on the fucking offer He is the only actor who understood the assignment Everyone who watched that show, all 12 people

[00:52:11] had that take away at the very least. Nothing else good is good. The whole show's a cartoon He's playing the guy who was a living cartoon character and you're like he found depth to Robert Evans He subbed in on the good wife. He was your

[00:52:25] Josh Charles replacement and he was good He was good. The show was kind of falling apart at that point. Tough moment for the show He subs in on Downton Abbey not to bring up Dan Stevens again but he's another mid-season. He's the rock doing

[00:52:37] Journey 2. He's like I'll swing in You need another English? You need another charmer? And Prestige TV Viagra He'd swung in on The Crown Man. Just maybe for one season Yeah. He's not in it very much He's like the Earl of Snowdon or whatever

[00:52:51] I think you're right that the Watchmen thing, A, there was that weird thing where it felt like the industry didn't understand Watchmen as it was about to come out where they were like well it's the 300 guy making a superhero movie

[00:53:03] It's going to be fucking humongous. It's the most beloved comic book of all time and people acted like every actor getting cast in that movie was about to have a Robert Downey Jr. Iron Man moment. Well this is going to make you iconic and you're like it's Watchmen

[00:53:15] It's like a dead end. There are no sequels to this And it's not asking for someone to give a movie star performance. It's asking for someone to give a dramatic performance Yeah. In my memory he's pretty blah He's the worst He's okay. Yeah

[00:53:33] But I just, you know what? I just fucking hate that movie. I will never come around on that movie. Fuck you I know who you are mad that I'm saying that I tried to watch the mega edition of it too Sorry

[00:53:49] I like the opening credits sequence. That's the one thing I like I think the opening credits sequence is overrated. I know you do It's okay. That really works for me and the rest of the movie I think kind of sucks. What do you think of Watchmen?

[00:53:59] I don't like it. I like the opening credits and then I think the rest of it is badly understanding the source material. Yes, I have always felt the same way I know some people like Watchmen and that's okay But we can all live in harmony together

[00:54:11] Much like being a cyborg. It's okay if you like Watchmen the movie. He I feel like his costume, his visual translation from the comic is the worst. Yeah, he kind of looked dorky when he was supposed to look like the perfect man. That's the thing

[00:54:25] The design was bad and then I remember just being like he looks uncomfortable in the costume This whole thing with this guy is that he should be like so supremely confident above it all And I was like they gave him a bad costume and it

[00:54:37] looks like he can't move in it Who was the person? I'm trying to remember who the obvious fan casting was at the time. I don't know. That didn't happen. There was someone where everyone was like we all agree who should play Ozymandias I don't know. Tom Cruise?

[00:54:53] I mean, I don't know. That was an earlier version of it but whatever. Yes, post that I do feel like he's floundering a little bit. But this was the one where I was like yeah, this is what I want from this guy you know. Sociopath hottie

[00:55:07] wears a pair of sunglasses and a polo shirt like nothing else or whatever There's something about him that's dead behind the eyes but in a good way like normally when an actor's kind of dead behind their eyes that limits them but there's something

[00:55:19] about him that's just unapproachable. Makes sense for this character perfectly obviously The other, I mean, a single man is the other thing that's invoked about him where he's the dead partner right? He's the only in flashback kind of again like sort of an ideal or whatever Yeah, good

[00:55:37] Right, he does leap year right before this which was a real like maybe we finally sell him as like a... I think leap year is okay. Leap year's fun. Leap year's alright. It's a nice little movie. They're in Ireland, right? Is he Irish?

[00:55:51] Is he doing Irish? He's very Irish at that movie. Yeah. That movie's alright I watched that during my Gentle Movie run Yeah It looks nice. It's well shot It's not cocker. It's got a little classic. Yeah, it's pretty

[00:56:03] You know what else? I'm just like Amy Adams is fucking good Amy Adams? It's fucking good What's she doing? It's not a great run I hear she was the lead in some fucking movie where Griffin Newman played a chipmunk which is like career death

[00:56:17] Well, she was good in that How was I in it? You were good too I'm just saying don't only shout out her I mean she was good in that I was also a can of head ring It is tough to go back and Arrival is the last

[00:56:33] one where you're like that was a really interesting exciting thing. I will say this, biases aside I think she is incredibly good in Disenchanted but it's also kind of damning that that's the best movie she's been in in six years

[00:56:45] Easily the best movie she's been in since Arrival unless you sort of count the Snyder Cut Yeah. Where maybe you're just kind of like well, that's sort of an interesting object Even if you like the Snyder Cut a lot He did not know how to use Amy Adams

[00:57:01] I don't remember her really mattering in that movie too much Neither of those should be the best movie she's made in six years I would go like Arrival, Disenchanted then I'm like let's set Justice League aside for now I'm like Vice? Does it have to be Vice?

[00:57:21] You get why she's making the choices I'm really excited for her Marianne Heller thing I think that's that click Are they putting it on Hulu? They might change their mind but that's the intent Stoker Bit of a learning curve for our director here

[00:57:40] How fluent is he in English? I don't know As far as I know he talks through a translator when he's being interviewed but I'm not sure He wasn't given a lot of pre-production time He says shorter than he usually gets He's a meticulous storyboarder unsurprisingly

[00:58:02] This guy feels like he's just running gun He's like a Duplass brother kind of protégé He sees a puffy chair and he's like that's a movie Let's film the rehearsal He shoots with editing in mind Fuck that's with the puffy chair Puffy chair? Wait a second

[00:58:22] Sparks flying I think he also does beyond doing a lot of pre-pro storyboarding stuff he also does a lot of rehearsals does a lot of talking to the actors Thirst Stoker Shaw for 100 days Wow Stoker Shaw for 40 days

[00:58:42] which I would say is fairly typical for a movie this size If anything these days possibly long for a movie this size But it also makes me understand maybe why he hasn't made another English language film in 10 years of like this is luxurious that you're giving me 40

[00:58:58] In Korea what I do is I watch the playback of each take with all the actors and spend a lot of time discussing the take Which I think is what goes on on a Fox Searchlight movie set No

[00:59:08] I don't think that happens on any American director's movie set Right And you know he's got like his usual thing is like he has an on-set assembly person like an editor basically who's cutting takes into sequences as they're shooting them That's his usual process This is different

[00:59:28] Okay? He's also working with different producers, you know He's got less clout, you know Unsurprising. Like I think in Korea at this point in his career he can basically whatever he says goes Right Here there's a conversation for everything probably

[00:59:44] You know what I mean? You know what Hollywood's like guys Is this the last movie Tony Scott is alive for the production of? He's I think they dedicate it to him It's dedicated to him but that's why I was trying to figure out He died in August 2012

[01:00:00] I would assume yes he's still alive but maybe just you know And this comes out early 2013? It premiered at Sundance 2013 Right. So yeah I think this was the last kind of Scott-free production that he was hands on with to some degree Apparently Fox Searchlight's big thing was

[01:00:16] they did ask him to push the violence sometimes in ways he thought was sort of over the top Interesting Like for example like when you know he approaches Jackie Weaver with the belt Yeah. He wanted to cut really fast

[01:00:30] They were like you know cut out before he's even in the phone booth. They were like no no no no Shoot some stuff in the phone booth. Sure You see it from far away in the movie but still I don't know why

[01:00:40] they wanted it to be more lurid It's probably also just that classic Hollywood thing of like well let's just get everything and then we'll figure it out later I think there's that and I also just imagine they're like it's easier to

[01:00:50] sell this movie the more we have conventional horror moments in it Even if we're not going to use them in the trailer It helps us to have them He also didn't like the title and Fox Searchlight insisted on keeping the title. He wanted to call it prodder

[01:01:04] Do you think Wentworth Miller explained to him that a stoker is one who stokes? A stoker is one who stokes I am the one who stokes What do you call this movie? Like it's not like I'm like yeah stoker bad title it should have been called you know

[01:01:18] The Lonely Girl Murders You know Saddle Shoes I kind of think stoker's a good title Yeah My uncle is a serial killer and that's okay Yeah that's a good title too Although it does give up the premise a little bit You could call it Uncle Charlie

[01:01:36] I know that's what this supposed to be But like that's kind of a boring title I cannot imagine how uninteresting the Uncle Charlie script is Not to be rude but I'm like that sounds like the kind of thing where that's a good writing

[01:01:46] exercise to have all of that in your back pocket as you're writing this movie Give yourself context Give yourself context to Uncle Charlie before he arrives at the house and you're like everything I need to know about this guy Now the other thing I will say

[01:01:58] and this is a critique but a sort of understanding critique is this film was shot in Nashville This story is clearly steeped in Southern Gothic storytelling Doesn't feel Southern in any meaningful way The cast is almost exclusively Australian and British A lot of the references to like geography

[01:02:14] are California references Which is bizarre He seems to be setting it in nowhere I feel like when you're watching the movie you're like this isn't set in like the bayou or something Middleville High School or something Where are the Gators?

[01:02:28] So I feel like there is a bit of a push and pull where he says like I was going for more timeless, nondescript Which doesn't make sense to me because I'm like this story screams like fucking Crawdad should be singing Or whatever There is like big

[01:02:46] maybe it's just the presence of me at WatchCostco There is a big Bronte vibe to it You could see this being set in like the Scottish Highlands or something I think it would work almost in any location rather than no location

[01:03:00] But that's the thing about this which is why I think it rubbed some people the wrong way It's all stripped out so it's just like all style and it's all like archetypes And that vibe is for me fine But I think

[01:03:12] I imagine some people are just kind of like what can I grab onto here You realize she goes to high school which seems like a weird thing But then she shows up and she's just in Riverdale Like she's on the CW series Riverdale

[01:03:26] Riverdale if Reggie wanted to punch women Yeah Jesus, relax Lucas It's also like anytime there is a character from outside of this house who comes in they're just coming in from another movie Which is a vibe that I like Right, if I were bullying Jesus, what's her name

[01:03:44] India I would be like what fucking novel did you just walk out of Saddle Shoes Girl I can't believe you forgot her name is India India Stoker Very normal name Yes You know but he's turning it into more of a general fairy tale

[01:04:02] I feel like, you know dark fairy tale I think look Massive spoilers ahead right But I think the thing this movie does that is so interesting to me Is it basically plays this game of like I would not say it's a twist film, right No because

[01:04:20] it's pretty obvious that something is afoot immediately Right, but what it's playing with is this expectation of like which person in this house is the problem Right You sort of start off the movie with the like ice queen mother Right, then uncle Charlie

[01:04:34] comes in who's a little bit too good to be true And you're like so are they up to something together And you're like, is the lead character in danger And then you get to this point where you're like No it's about the fact that she's also

[01:04:46] kind of a problem Right And I like that it's like the clues are kind of there from the very beginning The opening, the hunting, all that sort of shit But he's sort of using against you the idea of like You know the thing that gets fucking jumbled

[01:05:02] in stupid film twitter discourse all the time Of like if the character is the protagonist She must like her, she must be relatable I'm going to ignore all the warning signs Much as Nicole Kidman says Right I'm going to ignore all the warning signs that are clearly there

[01:05:18] Because I want to love her because the movie is putting her at the center of the story So clearly she must be the hero, the victim The person I need to be rooting for And looking out for and everything

[01:05:28] And then you get to this point halfway through where you're like She is infected with the same shit that he is Bad blood Right And she's like so much worse than I am, I need to get away Sure

[01:06:10] And then at the end she comes out and it's like oh she's just fully a serial killer Now she loves doing this And her, and like the thing is even when you see her dad Who's this beloved figure He is like training her to kill her uncle

[01:06:20] Because he's Dexter's dad Right Like he's coming in to like give you the serial killer Yes Knowledge that you will need The outlet Do you remember Mulroney? He's 14 years older than Matthew Goode Yes What's going on there? Well look, he was supposed to be Colin Firth at first

[01:06:42] I think this part was supposed to be younger That would make more sense, Goode is actually weirdly too young They do set up that the kids have a pretty large age gap They do Which I think does work for that flashback scene of there being this relationship

[01:06:52] To like he's a little bit more of a co-parent Than just a big brother Right And so he really wears the responsibility of I let the other kid die To deep spoiler Spoil the movie already My bigger thing with the Dermot Mulroney casting

[01:07:08] Is for so much of the movie They're implying that he's this disgusting old fat guy Right They basically do this thing of like you're so much younger than your brother was Sure

[01:07:18] Like Nicole Kidman is getting so turned on by this like more virile version of her dead husband Right And they make all the jokes of like his clothes are a little loose on me This belt is oversized Yes And then you see Dermot Mulroney, the ultimate silver fox

[01:07:30] And he looks good Yes It's not like he's hideous in this one No I feel like they're making you think that the dead father is John Pulido That would be funny And then it's like an hour and change before you finally get a flashback to him

[01:07:42] And you're like yeah the guy who famously has aged better Fucking MTV movie award best kiss nominee Oh Bad hair look I like Dermot Mulroney I do too I'm just gonna throw it out there I just think he's a fucking steady presence Have you seen Scream? No

[01:08:02] He spills a tub of paprika in that movie I mean It's It's a bold performance He's interesting in that movie Right He watched other actors in Scream and was like man this is too subtle In like the Scream series But anyway I do generally like Dermot Mulroney

[01:08:20] But yes okay the plot of Stoker is You got India She's always gotten a pair of saddle shoes on her birthday She's very feely she's very quiet She's very weird She feels things intensely Yes she's got Nicole Kidman in sort of like Frozen face mode as her mom

[01:08:36] That's always gonna be you know It's a stepford wife mode Emotionally distant Her dad is now dead in a car crash Inexplicably on her birthday And guess who's in town Uncle Charlie played by Matthew Goode Who has never even been spoken of before

[01:08:52] Right who claims he just came in from Europe And is an international businessman of great renown And he's crazy Not to be you know Too blunt about it No this is He's crazy and does murders You could have given this movie the title My Crazy Uncle

[01:09:10] And like the poster could have been Mia Wazikowska Head tilted Jared Depardieu behind him like a jet ski or something Yeah This is a movie where I'm like It feels incorrect to say like He is suffering from mental illnesses You're like no he is movie crazy

[01:09:26] He is in the grand literary tradition of crazy people He's one of them Crazy is the only way to describe this His reaction to problems is to murder This is not how a human brain works This is movie crazy

[01:09:40] There are human obstacles he will remove them with murder And a belt is always involved He's very fond of strangulation with belt Yes And You know five minutes into the movie We're all like well he killed her dad Right And she's piecing it together

[01:09:58] And you're like is this what the whole movie is going to be about Not really That's what I like It's that sort of like magic trick thing He's making you look at the wrong thing Yes You're watching him being like why are they taking so long

[01:10:12] To unfurl this guy Because it's about her It's about distracting you from the fact Yeah It feels for a long time like an inversion of Lolita In certain ways And then he is grooming her But grooming her to be herself In some weird way Right

[01:10:32] He sees the whatever The crazy in her He's removing the sort of The blocks that Dermot Mulroney has built around her The blinders And he To spoil the film He's like Jesus it's a 90 minute movie you can rent it on Amazon That's good And it's good

[01:10:52] Maybe not Amazon but a company Sure I agree with you He is explicitly asked to be released from the mental institution That he was actually in, not Europe On her 18th birthday Because he's decided and said when she comes of age

[01:11:04] She can become the Bonnie to his Clyde Right He's been obsessed with her since she was born Despite being Kept as far away from the beginning He just has the sense of like You're a mutant too

[01:11:18] I feel like serial killers needing protégés is like a harmful stereotype Like actual serial killers Plenty of serial killers They're perfectly self sufficient But I do like that there's sort of this like We need to talk about Kevin thing where this girl's born

[01:11:30] And everyone's like oh fuck she's a killer How do we Like as a baby you get the sense that everyone Dermot Mulroney was like okay I have to create Like a real regiment around Like not letting her murder other human beings And Matthew Goode is locked up

[01:11:44] In an institution he can just feel it The second she's born Somewhere another killer So Okay so Richard shows up He's hanging around the funeral Being cute Sorry Charlie Charlie argues with The maid Played by Phyllis Somerville The great Phyllis Somerville Great stage actress I think recently Dead?

[01:12:12] Yes 2020 She every year Dermot Mulroney Would Get his daughter a pair of saddle shoes There's this crazy fucking Shot sequence of the shoes shrinking Beautiful box with a bow on it And this is her birthday her dad left her Which is unlike him because he loves her

[01:12:32] And he's such a doting father And she checks The box it's empty She checks again there's a key inside And she realizes The presents weren't from you They were from dad They were from you And I guess the implication is the maid Has been sort of Charlie's

[01:12:52] Sort of avatar In the house His go between And so the saddle shoes I don't There's this whole thing with the saddle shoes Where the saddle shoes represent innocence Putting on high heels represents Embracing one's womanhood And becoming a certain

[01:13:12] High heels are like the knives of the feet When you talk about this movie It does sound like an F minus One star piece of shit I love it I get why certain people are like Fuck this I feel like this is one of those movies where

[01:13:28] The people who didn't like it were loudly scoffing In the theater like oh come on So but yeah he argues With the maid guess what happens to the maid Gets belted She gets put in the ice cream tray Ice cream freezer

[01:13:42] You know what flavor of ice cream she was Surrounded by? Belt What else is going on? She's being bullied At school by Lucas Till Who is crazy and keeps Threatening to punch her And like I just

[01:13:58] This is one of those things where I'm like what is going on Where it kind of has the dynamic of Not to be gendered about this but like a boy Picking on a boy It feels less common for the Jock at school to be like let me

[01:14:10] Threaten to beat up the emo girl Yeah but also maybe he's smart Maybe he's like I'm getting huge murder Vibes from her we need to put her in her Guys I'm not like punching Down I truly think this is self Defense for the entire town And then you

[01:14:26] Have Alden Ehrenreich Who I forgot was in this movie Playing Whip Taylor Who is Presents as a more like minded Student more sympathetic Another outsider Motorcycle boy Who kind of helps her Whatever deal with the bully Although she really deals with the bully herself

[01:14:50] By stabbing him with a pencil What else is going on? Nicole Kidman's there She's just going like Isn't Charlie so nice Jackie Weaver pops in Everybody in this movie is somebody And they come in for like two scenes Jackie Weaver High off her second Oscar nom? Yes

[01:15:10] Good for her One of the great two double nominees Hollywood has never quite figured out how to use She still does stuff She works constantly I love her I feel like she should be the boss in a TV show She should be the fucking chief CSI or DCIS

[01:15:28] The FBI Memphis She should fall into the Good Wife universe That feels like where She could be a wacky lawyer judge She could be They could give her her own show What's this Good Wife spin off with the wacky Elspeth Is that a good character? I mean sure

[01:15:48] One of those characters that's very fun on that show Yeah You know like comes in Has a fun episode Every so often you're like I don't want to speak ill of the kings Because I think they make good television But I do think Has big the Tortelli's energy

[01:16:06] Let's put it that way There's a certain point in which the minecart might fall off the track I'm just saying They're taking some wild curves at this point I've never watched Wife Nor Fight I saw the trailer for that When the pilot got picked up

[01:16:20] And I was like this feels like New Girl Detective This is a spin off of this August Deeply respected Two series run Evil one of the great shows on TV right now The kings should have made Wife Fight That should have been their next show The Wife Fight

[01:16:38] With Glenn Close Yeah Aunt Gin shows up Hi how are you doing Here's Uncle Charlie Well that's weird Nicole Kidman's like sure Let's talk later She's like okay I'll go back to my motel She also says we can talk only in front of Charlie

[01:16:58] She's not like hey Nicole Can I pull you aside for a second At dinner she's like Can we make plans later to talk privately about this guy Who I don't want to hear what I have to say to You Does Nicole Kidman know About the dead brother

[01:17:14] This is exactly my question If Nicole Kidman is aware of Like something being wrong Why is she then like yeah I'll talk to you later Jackie She's sort of condemning her to death there Yeah I think she's not I think she doesn't know Or she's willfully blind

[01:17:34] I also think she's more suspicious Of India than she is of Uncle Charlie I think that's sort of the explanation Is that she's just like My husband's dead did my daughter do this I mean and this does have That movie thing where like The quote unquote crazy guy

[01:17:50] Does such a good impression of a normal person That in the reality of this film You wouldn't necessarily think Well he's clearly a serial killer Because he's acting in a very heightened way But in a movie that is heightened I suppose that's true I might have my suspicions

[01:18:06] I don't want to sound like Sherlock Holmes over here Sure So Charlie Kills Aunt Jen at the motel In a phone booth with his belt She says I'm going to the motel gets in the car immediately Says where else I think that cut to Him saying

[01:18:24] Where are you staying the belt more Are there any other hotels in town A little easter egg Staying at the murder inn She stays at a different hotel but she still does get more of the belt David David That's the door right

[01:18:43] He's saying are there any other hotels To just wide shot of her in this horrible motel room Sitting there waiting to be murdered Is really funny to me Look I also just think Jackie Weaver is really funny Like just her sitting is funny Yeah There's just something

[01:19:01] She's got that crocodile smile Yeah just kind of inherently like very heightened about her That I think is good I agree I'm very pro Jackie Weaver I don't know She probably can play subtle characters Just not in Hollywood This movie is just fast

[01:19:19] You describing the plot of it Makes me It's just a person enters the movie They are killed It shouldn't work It shouldn't really work What happens after that Is the whole encounter with Whip The piano scene Okay so the best scene in the movie And that's the scene

[01:19:41] That's the scene Does that happen before Or after Jackie Weaver Pretty sure that happens After the murder of Jackie Weaver But before the murder of Alden Aaron And cross cut with Matthew Goode belting Jackie Weaver In the phone booth Is Mia Voskouska finding

[01:20:01] The other dead body in the freezer So she now kind of has all the information And he The day before had been Getting piano lessons from Nicole Kidman And been like I don't even know how to play the piano And then you have this scene where

[01:20:15] India is sitting at the piano playing Phillip Glass Diddy An original piece of composition For the film Yes he was originally hired to score the whole film And then ended up just doing the piano pieces According to JJ that may be a misconception Based on the fact that

[01:20:31] Glass wrote this one piece of music Okay That he was going to do the whole movie Clint Mansell does the score But look The film was written to the hour's soundtrack You gotta get Glassy in there You know you gotta throw up a pain Gotta shower some glass

[01:20:49] Gotta double glaze it How many more of these puns can I do Throw up a pain And there's this scene Where he joins her To play double piano And it's like they're bucking I don't know how else to put it He's trying to absorb her

[01:21:07] And he's like challenging her And she's like oh I know how to do this And their feet are getting tangled around the pedals They're sharing the bench You know So sexy so creepy Everything we're saying sounds like its own euphemism These two sharing the bench

[01:21:23] This whole movie is a euphemism Pushing the pedals And obviously Mr. Alfred Hitchcock Director Park's favorite He's like well they won't let me show fucking in the film So I'll instead make a scene where it's like they're fucking That's what he sounded like David Wonderful

[01:21:41] That was an incredible introduction I've seen enough Alfred Hitchcock to know That's what he sounded like They should reboot Alfred Hitchcock Presents And have you do the introduction I saw There's a play called Hitchcock Wand Which I think had a Broadway run

[01:21:57] That is like a very strange play by Terry Johnson That's like a double narrative Of like Alfred Hitchcock meeting a woman That he's casting to be in Psycho Or something like that He's casting for something And A media studies professor And his like student Unearthing

[01:22:17] Oh no that's right Meeting a woman who he shoots a test reel with And this media studies professor unraveling the test Like you're finding it And it's all about Hitchcock Was that made into a movie Or am I remembering a thing from the forest

[01:22:31] You're remembering something from the forest Let's not even talk about it But you were absolutely right There was the movie with Hopkins That I never saw With Helen Mirren The Girl That was a TV movie That's the Tippi Hedren That was about Mickey Marnie and the birds

[01:22:51] Hitchcock is about Psycho This is more about The complicated relationship With the Hitchcock blonde And Rosamund Pike played the Hitchcock blonde And David Haig played the media studies professor But William Hootkins Played Hitchcock Who everyone may know best as Porkins From Star Wars Who just had a great

[01:23:13] Hitchcock vibe They didn't have to do much work The name William Hootkins already You're like this guy can play First you think he's probably someone who can turn into an owl at will Like William Hootkins Or produce many owl babies

[01:23:27] But I just remember walking out of there being like So who's that playing I'm probably like 16 years old And I was like wait a second That's Porkins the guy who dies one minute into the trench run Well you speak about the deep Southern fry veracity of this movie

[01:23:41] Old Texas style Sheriff shows up in this film Played by Rick Ollier Yes Ralph Brown Who is I believe he's the one in Phantom Menace Who delivers the classic line We didn't do anything when fucking Anakin Is blowing up an entire base Yes We didn't hit it

[01:24:05] Yes Rick Ollier you're right He plays the southern fried sheriff Who gets garden sheared at the end of the movie Which like I'll say Worst sheriff of all time I don't want to say he had coming but he really fucked up

[01:24:17] He shows up to their house being like Hey what's up This kid got murdered you were last seen with him She's like I don't know I was here And Matthew Goods is like I was here too He's like see you later sounds good

[01:24:29] By the way the maid that disappeared any word on that They're like no and he's like People go missing all the time My car is running What's wild about him is he actually You watch him ask all the right questions And then ignore the answers

[01:24:43] He's like okay I'll see you later Matthew Goods saves her by having memorized TV schedules That's true he comes in with a PBS You know fucking Moliere was on Or what I can't remember what it was There you go Was Uncle Charlie on the Oscar watch for him

[01:24:59] Was he a television without pity guy We were all like I'm not sure about this guy But they don't say what channel PBS is on Because of course this is not set in a specific place No of course not It's a nebulous PBS

[01:25:11] Emily I feel like we're moving through the plot quickly Are there things we breezed over That you want to touch upon at all No because I feel like my whole Vibe on this film is you know I'm going to come in

[01:25:21] At the end and give a wild reading We have to summarize what happened It's the classic Emily move Okay you have a wild reading So Whip you know there's the whole scene Where he kind of saves her They wander out To like a diner

[01:25:37] They make out she bites his lip No he saves her then she goes to the Diner in the middle of the night after she's solved That her uncle is a murderer After the ice cream revelation She goes there he's basically like what are you doing

[01:25:49] On the wrong side of the tracks And it's like I'm here to fuck in the woods She bites his lip and he's like You know He makes some comment about like Everyone says you're weird I didn't know you were that weird

[01:26:01] And she says like don't blow this for me She says something like Yeah like shh I'm not actually interested in you talking No and also like I don't want you to be Into this that's not the juice I'm looking

[01:26:13] For here. This movie is just like men are evil Like men don't, men go from Men go from zero to sixty You can't throw them too far. You know who else are evil in this movie? Everybody. Women. Except for Nicole Kidman Well Nicole Kidman's bad

[01:26:25] Two thirds of the movie is making you think Is she the worst person in this film And at the end you're like she tried Yeah she got dealt a bad hand she should probably Just not have whatever. She did try

[01:26:37] Maybe she's got some character defects but she tried She did her best Mixed up with the Stokers I have a friend whose maiden name is Stoker It's a cool name Stoker. I think if I married into The Stokers I could have handled it

[01:26:51] I think I could have made some things happen This is a classic Ben proclamation If I were the lead of the movie it would have worked out Yeah Ben if you're in Stoker and you're like Uncle Charlie shows up And you're like alright

[01:27:01] I'm gonna buy a plane ticket I'm outta here What are you doing? What's your move? You're India So you're probably not a serial killer yourself You haven't been activated No I haven't been activated I guess I would Turn him Into A killer for hire

[01:27:25] On the internet and make money Oh you would be like hey bud I like your moxie let's make some money Let's do something with this talent Have belt will travel I can make a website no problem I know how to use square space

[01:27:39] Let's also call out there's this art Class scene where They're all doing a nude Figure study and they go To her painting and it is She's doing like truly just like Cubes? They're just painting flowers And like she's painting the interior Of the vase and then this

[01:27:57] Other guy does A naked drawing of her This is you I wanna Do this to you Shoots rings out of his chest Lucas Till I want A movie about that guy just like The bully who also is like a good Artist but uses it only for evil

[01:28:15] Hey I'm the king of the campus Gonna sit on this abandoned chair And also like only bullies People who maybe need to be cut off at the pass Lucas Till's performance as Havok In the rebooted X-Men trilogy is one of The most insane performances ever

[01:28:29] He seemingly gets younger With every movie Even though 10 years are between him He's somehow supposed to be Cyclops' younger Brother none of it ever makes sense My second Dexter reference cause I keep making them But they should turn this into Lucas Till

[01:28:43] Being a bully who only bullies other bullies That's how he gets you God he's only 32 years old and He's met Creech he's got a whole life ahead of him We gotta shout out the art teacher though This is why I brought it up

[01:28:57] Ben who is playing the art teacher Mr. Feldman My boy Harmony It is Harmony Kareen Kareen as the art teacher Not really sure why Weird collection of acting roles He did that season of Girlfriend Experience He's in Manglehorn Or he's one of the leads

[01:29:17] The David Gordon Green Al Pacino Keymaker drama Wow yeah Pacino plus Cap Ben if you thought the keymaker Had a lot of keys Oh boy Wait till you get Manglehorned Yes he is in this film I mean it's not a major role

[01:29:39] Ben who would you cast Harmony as In like a one scene cameo I mean Cause he's done so many great ones Taylor make a role for Harmony Kareen Damn I don't know because he's The more recent cameos he's done He's the playing against type

[01:29:57] And I like when he pops up as just a fucking weirdo And says one weird line You want him to be like in a John Wick As like Mr. Crazy Wearing like a garbage bag His character name is The Creep Mr. Crazy King of the creeps

[01:30:13] I'm the creep king He shows up in some fucking Star Wars thing Oh sure And he plays the type of character that I love In stories in general He has a little head attached to a bigger guy A little guy And he's like smoking some kind of futuristic

[01:30:31] Sort of tobacco Weed It's a futuristic cig What if Michael Shannon is the big guy What if we attach Harmony Kareen to Michael Shannon Yeah I love that The two creeps Brought together I hate this guy We have to just acknowledge that She makes out with Whip

[01:30:55] It's all going okay But then He gets very aggressive All of a sudden And is basically about to rape her when Cause he's like you can't open the door And invite me in or kick me out Whatever Total heel turn from seemingly nice Alden Ehrenreich

[01:31:15] And Uncle Charlie shows up And first like hog ties him And is like Have your fun Mia While he's still on top of her And she kind of kicks him a bunch But she's not going to kill him Probably Yeah they show this later but then he like

[01:31:33] Grabs her and tries And I feel like at that point I would have just given up If Uncle Charlie's hog tied me I might be like Okay I'm out He's like I still might be able to make this work I'm this close to getting laid

[01:31:47] And then he's like I don't know He's just reaching for his zipper And so he Charlie strangles him with a belt and then breaks his neck You see the head kind of Jerk back In a natural manner And then India Takes a shower and whacks it

[01:32:07] Which is the real moment Where you're like okay she is not some You know sort of Innocent in the middle of a spider web Who's trying to navigate all this stuff She is perhaps like you know Carrying the same curse And then that's basically when she has the

[01:32:23] Conversation with Nicole Kidman I think When she's brushing her hair You have that amazing fucking transition Where it goes to the hyper close up Of Nicole Kidman's hair with the brush running through it And then like so gradually That you don't even catch it

[01:32:37] I rerun this three times just because I was stunned by the craft of it It turns into like fields of grass There's so much stuff like that in this movie That is mind blowing The one I love is when she's reading all the letters

[01:32:49] And it turns into her face Yeah This is why this is the speed racer Of abusive family movies But she basically like admits to Nicole Kidman Like I'm the bad guy of the movie What's your move here But she says that like I always thought

[01:33:05] My dad took me hunting because he loved it He was trying to sometimes you need to do something bad To stop someone from doing something worse You were in India's point of view For basically this entire movie There's a few scenes without her

[01:33:17] It is like it does feel like Uncle Charlie is Like the scenes that would just be him Is like him on his phone reading The wiki how on like how to activate a serial killer Because he has this very like Methodic process he's going through

[01:33:31] Like this is how I'm going to get her to be Also like me I like that this movie Feels super natural and that it treats The idea of being a serial killer like it's like Being a werewolf What's the vampire movie Yes and you basically have this

[01:33:47] Father who has like seen it in his brother Couldn't stop it right Spent the next decades Of his life trying to make sure his brother was just Like contained and off the map And then from the moment his daughter is born

[01:33:59] He like sees it in this fucking baby's eyes Like she's Renesmee Like she's got these like nightmare adult Eyes from the moment she's born And he's like well she's my daughter I will love her no matter what I need to create the circumstances that somehow prevent her

[01:34:13] From ever being triggered No one can ever utter the code words That activate her You know And then Matthew Good just like unlocks it And she's just like oh right this is who I fundamentally am To be fair he like puts a corpse in a freezer

[01:34:27] And like leaves it for her to find Which seems like uh yeah Like pretty triggering And then he was just slips her a note that says I'm sorry for no Big yes So um When she uses that key Which has been sort of lingering That's when she finds

[01:34:47] Uh that it opens Richard's desk drawer It's filled with Letters that Richard I'm sorry that Charlie wrote her From his mental Institution Well it's these like wildly sort of like romantic Looking like gothic letters Yes Which we're seeing them in sort of the opening credits

[01:35:07] But you don't really know what they are And then it's like right here are 18 years worth of letters He's written about the connection he has And they're all from like one two three Looney bin road you know Savannah Georgia Or whatever

[01:35:19] He's talking about all his travels and his journeys In this country and that country And there's the thing earlier at the table where like when Jackie Weaver's there When she's like Europe Right Nicole Kidman says like it's so nice of him to take his time

[01:35:31] Libertine lifestyle in Europe And right Jackie Europe is the thing that like triggers Jackie Weaver Into like red alert red alert So then you're reading these letters that are like Is he was he doing what he says he was

[01:35:45] And then after she reads all the letters and gets kind of Like enchanted by them only Then as she's leaving the study Does she turn around and go like what's on the back of these Envelopes And every one of them has the stamp that's like as you said

[01:35:57] One two three Looney bin way There's a gun in the drawer too Which implies that whoever gave her the key Is intending her to Kill Uncle Charlie But she reads the letters and is not Freaked out she's like

[01:36:11] And I like that you have as you're saying the speed racer Editing is happening You also have It's going between his voice Over and her voice over Hearing his voice in his head and her kind of Like falling into the narrative Which is confusing

[01:36:27] I would say initially you're kind of like wait Is this some secret correspondence that they had and you're like no Right did they have a relationship that you're forgetting about He's fantasizing but she's willing to tap into it I also love when she turns

[01:36:37] Around and sees the the Looney bin way Address stamp She like looks at it like wait a second And then she flips to the next one As if like well maybe this one's actually from France He was just there for a week

[01:36:49] You have her flip through every single letter to be like All of them It would be funny if there was Like a niece Just different crazy Asylums He just did a tour He went to Switzerland Asylum to crazy Look At this point I guess The sort of dilemma

[01:37:15] Of the film or the Hook for audiences is like Okay so is she now just all in Going to be his apprentice And that's what the rest of the movie is going to be about And the hidden twist

[01:37:27] Is he so much of a threat that even she's scared Right and then of course the hidden twist is No she is going to You know kill him off Like she this is you know She perceives a threat she knows what he wants

[01:37:39] And she knows how to manipulate him She does want to like protect her mother On some level but also doesn't want to be Her mother's daughter which I think is a fascinating Dynamic to explore Is this when the flashback is Layered into all of this are the revelations

[01:37:53] That Charlie murdered Richard With a big old rock in the car Yes You know he rocked him The only reason he would miss her birthday is if there was Something more important that he needed to do And he had to go pick up Uncle Charlie

[01:38:07] And unfortunately he forgot to bring his rock shield Who seemingly like He forgot to bring his paper He's like checked himself out of the institution After seemingly like Harley Quinning One of the women who works there Stuff for old Charles I would get Harley Quinning

[01:38:23] I'd be like sure buddy Get you out of here You know with an E And then of course the deeper darker revelation Which I feel like we see initial flashbacks here And then we sort of see the final flashbacks a little later

[01:38:35] Of they had a third younger brother What was his name? Jonathan What happened to Jonathan And Charlie was jealous of the attention He got from Richard so he buried him in a sand pit It's the one move It's part of Tim's move It's like you gotta kill somebody

[01:38:55] It is a creatively brutal way to die Very disturbing And so that's The story of the Stokers What could go wrong when you have A deep child sized pit A sand castle right in front of it And a bunch of digging tools

[01:39:13] Don't let Charlie near the digging tools He does like to bury people Because he buries someone in the ice cream He puts it right at the bottom of the slide And then it's like hey Jonathan come down I feel like

[01:39:25] Even a two year old is not going to slide into him But this is where I do think The age difference helps Is that it's like his jealousy of the brother Paying more attention to the younger kid Makes more sense if the oldest brother

[01:39:37] Is a little bit of an adult I also love the tension of the lawnmower Is just running You know that You intellectually know that Richard Has run very far away from it But it seems like it's going to come and like

[01:39:51] Mow off one of their feet or something And there's another kind of speed race moment Where you're watching the flashback And then the camera pushes into the shed Where it's adult Charlie at his typewriter Watching the flashback He's sort of writing the tale

[01:40:05] He's got his head on a little boy's body And then you go in and oh now it's the little boy So yeah I think it's pretty effluent The movie's fucked up good I just think this is like an okay script Where Park correctly is just like

[01:40:17] Let's lean into the sort of mania of it At every turn Like let's make no moment uninteresting In this like lean You know thriller Like already lean very sort of like Over the top and silly thriller You mentioning the sound of the lawnmower

[01:40:33] The sound mixing in this movie is Unbelievable I notice sound a lot Because you know I work in fiction podcasting Where we have to listen to fucking sound design All the goddamn time And it is unreal how good this movie Is at evoking the way it is

[01:40:49] To kind of just hear everything But not pay attention to any of it He is one of those filmmakers Where you watch one of his movies And you go like why aren't most filmmakers Using sound as this much of a tool I think most people just use it

[01:41:03] As like just functional means to an end And just get the clean audio on the day The Coen brothers are like this as well Where it's like they pump up the unreality Of every sound an additional 10 to 15 percent in a way that really Makes you feel it

[01:41:17] That feels like it gets some static truth And I think this movie has this very flowery Score but it's really smart About when to like pull back and go totally Silent or focus in on the sound of One bug There is that moment after the fucking Piano sequence

[01:41:33] And it's like they get to The climax moment and then She turns around and he's gone And then it cuts to her knee And there's the spider slowly unfurling On her knee and it's like It's so quiet you can hear The legs of the spider brushing

[01:41:49] Against her stockings It's good shit Yeah the use of Sound is impeccable but also The use of silence which obviously is A sound design choice in and of itself Is the He's so good at that in all Just the way that he creates the sense Of being imprisoned

[01:42:09] By that sound in a weird way It's great. And even the way he uses silence You're like his like silence is amped up Yeah. It's like he turned up the volume On the silence. Everything in this movie Like the use of color in this movie

[01:42:21] Is astonishing the use of Blood splatter the way that Mia Wasikowska Is always dressed in very Off color outfits until kind of The very end. Yeah she's styled as like A child out of time. Yeah In fact I watched this with some friends who

[01:42:35] I thought would dig it and they really did and They assumed the movie took place in the 70s Until somebody mentioned that It was technically taking place in the 2010s Sure. It does Have that feel. It does. She dresses A little bit like Annabelle

[01:42:51] The doll? The doll. The killer doll The doll that just sits there and you die My favorite Thing in the Annabelle movies is when They are like they are like looking They're looking to escape the house and they go Into this crawlspace and Annabelle's just sitting there

[01:43:05] And it cuts them going whoa and then it cuts to Annabelle Well they just were like here's the rule She can never come to life. Yeah. So what Is the crux of these movies? She just shows up in a different place sitting still Love Annabelle Annabelle is cool

[01:43:21] And I support her I did hear that Matt Healy is going To be on Annabelle's podcast Which is not a great look Alright so the final act. So we have The shoe moment which we've mentioned Like clearly Charlie thinks this is his I'm speaking the kill phrase

[01:43:41] You know what I mean? Where he's like once she puts on The shoes then where we've locked in Serial killer or protégé An MK ultra like agent The thing is it works. He does Act. He does finally complete Activating her. She needed just another

[01:43:55] Five inches of height Those are good shoes. They are. Yeah Good shoes And she seemingly is like Cool bro. Yeah let's go I get it. I'll pack a bag Let's go on a murder spree around the country New York City baby. Right exactly Just if you could just

[01:44:13] You know Kidman for me. That'd be great And he's like will do. See you in a minute And while he's Doing that is sort of the big turn And you have all the stuff that's layered in With her dad. Before that And Nicole Kidman's giving her big speech

[01:44:29] Her big speech happens before She sends Charlie into the room with her After the shoes. Right It's sort of the following morning She goes to her room and Kidman sees Everything. She's like pieced it all together I think one of my favorite shots in the movie

[01:44:43] Is for some reason this room has two doors I don't know why it has two doors in but Charlie's standing in one and it's Open and you know that Evie Is that her name? Is behind the other door And it's closed and when he

[01:44:55] Crosses behind the closed door You know shit's about to happen It's such an economic way of Creating menace I just think Kidman Fucking kills this monologue. She does because Kidman Does have the character in this movie where you're like Huh like Oscar winner

[01:45:11] Here yes of course she can You know she can do this in her sleep And Nicole Kidman she disappears kind of for 45 minutes But after the first 20 minutes right You're not really in the movie and you're kind of like eh she's just Playing the like patsy you know

[01:45:23] She's playing the dumb you know. And you're sort of like this is like obvious casting Like what would draw her to this and it's all This monologue. It's that she gets to be the turnkey For the entire movie really. This movie Got four Fangoria Golden Chainsaw Award

[01:45:33] Nominations I looked this up was Nicole Kidman one Of them? I feel like she wasn't Because she got a lot of Like she was one of those people who got hype at the End of the year like this is one of those overlooked performances

[01:45:43] And I hope Fangoria recognized her Uh let's see I do feel like there was this run of Nicole Kidman Doing really interesting work in performances That people were like In a cooler world she would get an Oscar nomination For this and between Whatever it is between the hours

[01:45:59] And rabbit hole Yeah. She's just never getting the Oscar Nomination that she wants clearly She did not get nominated I'm sorry Lily Taylor won best supporting actress that year for The Conjuring Which is a good win. Sure great Julianne Moore in the Carrie remake

[01:46:13] Tristan Risk in something called American Mary Amber Childers in something called We are what we are. I do like that The Golden Chainsaws do Do swerve and then Julia Garner Also in We are what we are Nicole Kidman got a Fright Meter Award nomination I'm seeing here

[01:46:31] Good. Yeah Very deserved Worst film of the year Went to Texas Chainsaw 3D Rude. Conjuring really swept The Chainsaws that year that looks like I get it. Good ass movie Love The Conjuring. Yes So Nicole's big monologue is basically I'm sorry. David this is very Important. The international

[01:46:53] Online cinema awards gave Nicole Kidman the win for best Supporting actress for their halfway awards They can't wait till the End of the year so they do an award for just the first half Of the year. Now have you heard Of the international cinephile society It's very

[01:47:09] It is a hoity toity group that gives lots of movies To international awards. David's leaning back on this tangent And I'm leaning in. Do you know who started This organization? Emily St. James? David Sims What? Why are you bringing that shit up?

[01:47:23] It was uh. It is insane that It still exists. And now they have like PR I know. And they get written up everywhere What? There was and on the Oscar forums there was a Thing called Inoka which was the Yearly awards. I've never

[01:47:37] Seen this much shame on his face And David and a mutual Friend of ours named Learned. Learned Foot. Your old roommate. Learned Foot? Learned Foot That is too deep a rabbit Hole to go down right now. That is his Name. He was created by Wentworth Miller

[01:47:53] He kind of was Learned Foot does feel like if I told you his Life story does feel like he walked out of Wentworth Miller's script. The unproduced One. Learned and I did start the ICS As a As a rival. A fuck you to

[01:48:09] The Inokas and now it is like This huge thing. I know like Fucking Justin Chang is In the ICS and I'm not I cannot believe I didn't know about that I think I stopped submitting my ballots years ago You're speaking about this like you're Robert Oppenheimer

[01:48:23] And this was your comic book. You hate that you Brought this into the news. I know I'm glad they do They do their thing. I mean it's totally great I was there for a long time too and stopped Submitting and now I like I looked at it last

[01:48:33] Year and was like who the f- how are all of these people In this? Good work David You did it. Wow Yeah I don't know Why that came up. Oh did Soaker get an ICS? No you said somebody said International Online Cinema Society And that like pinged my

[01:48:49] David Sims radar. Yeah yeah Halfway of words. So you're actually father to Three children. I was like 16 years old. That was your first child Maybe I was old. Maybe I was In college. The whale you adopted and abandoned You and Learned then had shared

[01:49:03] Shared custody and eventually you both Abandoned that child too. You know So be free I was like Nicole Kidman in this movie Being like look you know You gotta do your own thing but I've always wanted to watch You suffer No I'm happy the ICS Is exists

[01:49:21] I- I- you think I'm embarrassed by this I'm not embarrassed exactly It is just bizarre that it still exists I don't think you're embarrassed at all. I did start It when I was a teenager. This is like if I Reveal when I was 15 I accidentally Like created

[01:49:35] Fucking CSI Miami Or something and I'm like I don't know The ICS is not as successful as CSI Miami. I don't know It was a mistake. I feel like you'd be getting a lot of residuals If you created CSI Miami Do you get any residuals from the ICS

[01:49:49] Uh no. Okay Is there money to be made? I don't think so. Someone holds The copyright too Well it ain't me I'll tell you that much I didn't do any work on that Who's this guy Cedric? Uh he's a He was on the board. Yeah

[01:50:05] What was his name on the board? Uh Herman Ross I think maybe I don't remember. I think he eventually Changed to just Cedric because that was his First name. Right. Remember Jesus Alonso? Yes How's he doing? You know what I'm sure He's fine. Okay good

[01:50:23] Talk about that later. Alright So we gotta get you added to the about Page. Yeah. Listeners Of ICS? Yeah throw me on there What their damn mailbox. FYI Editor uh sorry creator emeritus David Sims The end of the film. Mmhmm It looks like Charlie's gonna kill Evelyn. Yes

[01:50:43] Good's gonna kill Kipman. Right And then he and India Will go off together. Yeah The first time you saw this film Did you assume the twist was coming? Like Did the sort of Intercutting with you know her and Dermot Mulroney looking through their

[01:50:59] Guns like was that enough for you to kind of Be like nah it ain't this Like this is not just like you know the Dawning of Bonnie and Clyde. Bonnie and Clyde Bonnie. I think what I like about this movie and I think Director Park

[01:51:13] Is particularly good at this Handmaidens another one that does this Where you're like he's gonna Keep upending this so frequently Right. That I cannot predict Just be like what I think is gonna happen. What the Landing point is cause it's not like he constructs

[01:51:27] Movies around one twist he constructs movies That keep on fundamentally Changing your sense of the reality Right. So I just I Didn't think I could get ahead of this movie cause I just didn't know what he was ultimately leading to But I like that Kipman sort of like

[01:51:41] It's the we need to talk about Kevin Thing. Yeah. You know there's that early Moment when after the funeral You hear the two women Uh joking about like and who's Gonna take care of her now her mother The coldest woman alive

[01:51:55] Yeah and they're talking about it and she's right There. Right and it's like I do Think she is inherently a somewhat Cold person. Yeah. But also It's like she just kind of immediately Isn't just like I hate my child Out of like some weird

[01:52:09] Brokenness is just like I've been Scared of you forever. Yeah I could not allow myself to get close to You and I was terrified by everything I saw In you. I think everyone should Just benefited From some you know group therapy Family trip to the ice cream

[01:52:25] Parlor. They should have brought in Gabriel Byrne as his In treatment character. Get everyone in treatment Cause it was four different Episodes. Yes. Like a week right so you Mia, Nicole, Uncle Charlie And Richard you do them all or maybe Auntie Jen

[01:52:39] Whatever. It would be funny if season three Of in treatment was just Stoker Just in treatment where he's like my toughest Case of all. The last episode is Him with his therapist so it's just everyone In this family is fucked up. His therapist

[01:52:51] Is played by Wentworth Miller and he said her name Was India? Let me get that down right And he's also by the way where are we? I don't know. I just woke up in this room I don't even know what city I'm in. There's that premise

[01:53:03] In so many movies where like a psychiatrist Is just like gonna write a book about their Crazy patient who then kills them I feel like that would be a perfect fit Oh it burned just at the end of the day. In treatment Stoker Yeah. I Love how Gabriel

[01:53:17] Burn in hereditary Is secretly playing like a sitcom dad Like nothing goes right for that dude in that movie The whole time he's just like What the fuck is the matter with you? To like everyone. They're like what? He's like Jesus Christ you're all crazy

[01:53:33] And then finally Tony Collette's like We are crazy. A demon cursed us And he's like will you shut up? I just need you to relax and then he gets lit On fire. He accomplishes nothing You cast like inherently intense Gabriel Burn to basically Play Lydia's dad in Beetlejuice

[01:53:49] Like when I I'm surrounded by weirdos. We really do Rewatch hereditary and are like this is a dark comedy His character is the one who is the most Like you know befuddled comic character Absolutely. Um anyway Love Gabriel Burn who's not in this movie

[01:54:03] No instead. Matthew Good has shot which Nicole Kidman Is relieved by because now she's not going to get Murdered by him and then she has to kind of look at her daughter With terror and be like I guess You're just let loose On the world now. Thanks but

[01:54:15] Right like You know see you later right I never want to see you again. Right There's a really good cutback To Nicole Kidman lying on her bed Where you're just like she's catatonic this woman is Just broken. And then she Leaves and the sheriff pulls her over

[01:54:31] She lures him in by speeding What's the hurry? Right. She's like the hurry Is to get you to pull me Over and he's like what? And she's like She's got the fucking like cool Hand Luke reflection in the sunglasses Great shot. Yeah It's praxis

[01:54:47] The cop in the neck with Pruning shears for no reason In 2013 people were like what a dark Action and in 2023 they're like I will say if I'm her Like serial killer advisor I might not Be like don't kill the first cop you see

[01:55:01] Sure. But I guess she's like that'll Tie up any loose ends if I Murder the sheriff? Uh huh I would love a movie where you were a serial Killer advisor like you were not a serial Killer yourself. Right before they do anything

[01:55:13] They're like I was thinking about killing this sheriff And I'm like no uh uh That's not the move. I think that's Cleaning up loose ends but also I just imagine with the ending of this movie She is about to murder every single person

[01:55:25] She talks to from here on out Let's play the box office game. Okay. I mean Great yeah no I'm sorry before we play I'm so sorry. Weird ass reading. Exactly David. Please. Main attraction So uh obviously I come into these Uh shows and tell people

[01:55:41] How everything is about being trans. Right Not this movie though. This movie has some weird Gender shit. Um I am very Drawn to uh movies About abuse That don't really make logical sense But make sense if you start Thinking of them as movies about

[01:55:57] Someone who is part of an abusive family dynamic Metaphorical sense. Yeah yeah yeah I love all of Ari Aster's films For that reason. Like people who are watching them Being like Beau is afraid didn't make sense No of course that's the fucking point. He's trapped

[01:56:09] In this cycle. Yeah yeah No and I was gonna say the way that abuse Alters your sense of reality Your sense of memories. Like a sober Removed depiction does not get at The emotional truth. And the problem With telling a story about abuse

[01:56:23] Is that um there's this book by Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life which Is literally just very blunt about How these characters were all abused and like Goes into such detail and The problem is once you start reading that much Detail about abuse it becomes a thing you

[01:56:37] Detach from. You just fundamentally cannot Appreciate it or understand it So sort of like talking about it Through genre, a genre exercise is the Way to do it. And like this is really A movie about the grooming And sexual abuse and Um violent abuse of this

[01:56:53] Girl that turns her into An abuser herself and Her father's been grooming her and her mother Has been turning a blind eye to all of this And her. And her brother Comes in and like I don't know how much that's intentional

[01:57:07] On the part of Wentworth Miller but Park Chan-wook Certainly seems dialed into it And it's a movie about Trying to sort of Understand the ways in which the family That you were raised in is fucked up And failing and like getting trapped By that. I like movies that

[01:57:23] Make sense in Terms of trying to Understand them as the character Basically dissociating from themselves throughout And that really feels what Indy is doing here So I read this movie As a movie about Coming to terms with the fact that you don't just live

[01:57:39] In a dysfunctional family but you live in an actively Toxic abusive one that is creating Violence and horror throughout the world And that really plays into All of Park's strengths like the editing The way that things blend together, the way that

[01:57:51] Nothing makes sense, the way that time sort of Gets dilated, the way that Flashbacks are intercut almost like having Repressed memories come back It's just It's really astonishing I agree. I think it's a great take It's very interesting to think about this because

[01:58:07] That all makes sense and yet I'm also like Did Wentworth Miller, who may well have written This as like a deep expression of These things, these sorts of thoughts Or did he write it as like no I'm going to write a pure Fucking Dracula

[01:58:19] Revamp-y kind of like the visitor From out of town like genre exercise I think Park really tapped into deeper things But I think you do have to give Wentworth Miller credit for this script He has said that he hasn't been able

[01:58:31] To write again because like this just kind of and I Wonder if this is the thing Where he's expressing like He did write one other film The Disappointment Sproom A Forgotten Night which he wrote with DJ Caruso. Now I haven't seen it

[01:58:45] So I don't know much about it He did some interview recently where he was like I really struggled to write since The early and I wonder if he just like Had this thing inside him He had to express which often is like

[01:58:57] A lot of my writing before I got into like trauma Therapy was literally like if you listen to season 2 Of Arden it's just me processing a bunch Of shit that happened to me without realizing I was Doing that. And all the people I worked

[01:59:07] With on that show were like well we assumed you knew I just I wonder How much art is created out of a space Of like I don't want to look at this thing but I'm going to Write about it anyway. I think a lot and look

[01:59:17] He's been. He talked about suffering from depression Yes. He's been very open with a lot Of his mental health struggles and it's very Tied to why he has increasingly Stepped back from the entertainment industry first From being on camera and even then from Writing as much Wenty. Wenty

[01:59:33] Write a script. I think he's a good guy. Give it a shot I think this movie is like and that's Interesting to think about in terms of how this movie Presents mental illness which is like a Prison you can't escape from like you are

[01:59:43] Trapped in this way of Thinking just by virtue of how you were Born and it's impossible to fix or Deal with and sometimes you just have to stab The sheriff. What's the final message that is Stoker is old India About to have a great life. You know

[01:59:57] Well has she has she made Some breakthrough. This is OK. Now I'm going Off of what you're saying. Right. But a thing I've been doing on A lot recently is like How doomed are you to become your parents Or not. Right. And I Classic a classic demon. Right.

[02:00:13] But I think almost all children are either Whether consciously or Unconsciously living in the shadow of the model that was Presented to them by the adults in their life or trying to Be the exact opposite of That. Right. And this is a movie

[02:00:27] In which everyone from the moment she's Born whether they're even a present for her birth Is sort of like fuck I see Who she is and everyone is Trying to kind of shift her Away from her innate being Right. They're sort of trying to

[02:00:41] Like don't replicate my sense Before it goes off. Right. Charlie's Like spiritually trying To affect her from a distance Her father is trying to find the outlet for The Nicole Kidman's like I just need to disengage And all three people fuck her up Equally. Yeah. In different ways

[02:00:57] All trying to find some way to control her Behavior make her image push her away from who She innately is whatever it is Right. Yeah. I do think that's the thing It's more speaking to not like we're all Inherently cursed but the

[02:01:09] Sort of like as much as you try to Control the outcome the more You actually probably push along To an inevitability. The problem With parental abuse is that it Stems from a you know I have a child now So it stems from this idea of like I need

[02:01:23] To help you do this thing I need to have. And abuse just becomes I am going to turn you into The person I think you need to be Because I think I think I know What's best for you. Like yes. Right now I do know

[02:01:35] What's best for my daughter I'm the only one who can Feed her she can't do it herself but like You know ten years from now That's not an appropriate way to treat Her. Yeah I can't handle that. I don't like

[02:01:45] Thinking about that. I'm always going to know what's Best right. Okay yeah you'll be the first 100% successful father. That's why you're India's advisor. Right yeah exactly Uh no that's the thing I think this Movie is really getting At that you know it's it's this

[02:01:59] Sort of like much like shit Like like werewolf stories a lot of Supernatural fiction is tied in this sort Of like sins of the father the bloodline The familial trauma the cycles that you cannot Avoid there is something nestled deep inside Of you try to fight it

[02:02:13] As you might it's there. And the problem With the trauma plot as presented by Hollywood And has increasingly turned into a series Of tropes. A thing you have written Very very well on over the last Couple of years. I find really disquieting

[02:02:25] As somebody who's been through a lot of Trauma therapy. The thing about it is You know you turn it into a thing The Marvel movies all do this you can punch it at the end And I think that's fine there's a catharsis

[02:02:35] To that in a certain way but I love the way because I think a lot of Parks Movies are about this way that you get Trapped in an experience you can never escape And I think that's why I love him. I remember

[02:02:45] When Decision to Leave was coming out it got a lot Of Oscar buzz because Bong Joon-ho of course had had huge Success with Parasite. Bong Joon-ho is very Good at catharsis like I'm not trying to say that In terms of like he makes you know Less like less

[02:02:59] Good movies. I think catharsis is an important Thing. I think the thing that will keep Park Chan-wook From ever being as big as he is In America is he just Makes movies that leave you feeling Really unresolved and gooey and weird His endings are unsettling he sticks you

[02:03:13] In the place you hoped you'd get out of He puts you in the hole and starts To like dig the sand on top of you Yeah. India cannot escape Her family. And like I mean I can tell you it's really

[02:03:25] Fucking hard to escape your family. You have to work Really hard. You have to consciously work really hard Most people don't want to do that. And most people Have pretty good families so like you pick up A couple bad things from your parents

[02:03:35] And then you maybe think about them with in therapy But there are some people who are just raised in hell And never escape. Yeah Yeah. No it's you know It's scary which most good Horror is tapping into something So innate In our being Some universal sort of element

[02:03:53] Of the human experience in that kind of way and I think I think this movie through Everything you're saying Does that. I mean and talking about the trial plot Thing not to spoil another movie And I'll speak about this as vaguely as possible for a 10 year old

[02:04:05] Film I've talked about a lot on this podcast But I'm like Babadook's a movie that does That fucking well where it's like You have to live with it. Yeah You can defeat it in a way that Resolves the movie but it's never Vanquished. Yeah And I do yeah

[02:04:21] I think that a lot of what we call So called elevated horror is About this is about realizing That trauma is unresolvable. Right And to a certain degree you can learn to live with it And you can learn to be a better person that has

[02:04:33] It lurking inside of you. Right I do think there's an alternate read of this movie that Is in essence like all vampire stories About the ways that rich people are perpetuating Trauma in the world so it's sort of like Succession, Park Chan-wook's succession But yeah I think

[02:04:47] This movie is fundamentally about abuse and the ways that Abuse replicates itself and Every character in this movie is abusive on some Level or another. Yeah yes and also It's just like the fundamental tragedy of this movie Is like. Honey I'm Jim. She's alright

[02:04:59] Yeah she's the one good person. Yeah She's alright she never did anything wrong. I feel like Jackie Weaver Should just play the one good person a lot of the time Obviously she isn't in some movies But the fundamental tragedy of This movie in my mind is that

[02:05:11] No one ever figures out how to talk to her Right. You're like the thing that really Dooms her is everyone is as you're saying Going I think I know what's best for her And you get the sense of like no one actually

[02:05:21] Is really listening to her. No one really knows how to talk To her or relate to her. They're only viewing her As a problem or an Accomplice or you know The tragedy of parent-child relationships Is how often you cannot See your parents or your child as a person

[02:05:35] Until it's too late. Yeah Well said Stoker premiered at the Sundance Film Festival In 2013 Released in March by Fox Searchlight Didn't expand beyond 275 theaters Nobody really saw it. This is very much A fairly mixed reception. I think people Thought might have like breakout potential

[02:05:53] In a sort of post Black Swan This is art house horror kind of World and had this very like You know Welcome to the family. You know these sort of posters Of them all standing there What is the twist in this thing?

[02:06:07] You imagine if A24 released this today It would make 10 million dollars easily This is the exact kind of movie that like There is now a model for that they know how to market Where even if people were mixed on it The fact that like men

[02:06:19] Gets to 10 million dollars domestic is like Well they made it a conversation piece where Stoker People are just like eh. Babadook's 2014 And that's kind of the start of that wave So it's just fucking missed it. Yeah Yeah I don't know if there's A version

[02:06:33] Of this movie being a hit but I want to repeat that men made 10 million Dollars domestic. Well you know Fucking Angus T. Jones showed up for it To sing the theme song I don't know. Men men men

[02:06:45] I don't know if that will be stuck in your head for a week now Yeah and review I assume they were hoping there would be Like raves that could help propel it And instead the reaction was very mixed That probably didn't help. I remember this getting very bad

[02:06:59] Reviews and instead it got like very There were people who fucking loved it. There were some raves And a lot of like You know a lot of that. But once again I think people who disliked it were like Fuck you. Yeah. There was

[02:07:11] A lot of like flipping over a table Like this is bullshit What was the widest it went? 275 screens Not very good. So obviously On this box office game on March 1st 2013 It's opening number 33 Seven screens 160 grand. Okay. Number one Though it's just one of the

[02:07:31] Most forgotten blockbusters in History. March 2013. Yep Is it it's not 10,000 BC No. But it's close 10,000 BC is like fucking Citizen Kane Compared to this thing. Fuck No it's yeah okay directed by A sex offender Or alleged I should say It's not a Burt Ratner

[02:07:53] Nope. Is it Jack the Giant Slayer? Jack the Giant Slayer The people went and saw that? Um Like an anemic number one. Right 27 million dollars. Which was like A calamity because it cost 200 million dollars It was expensive because they had to make all them giants

[02:08:09] Yes. Uh have not seen You know what's wild about that Did make 200 worldwide. I know and they were Like we're all gonna lose our shirts on this Yeah cause yeah. You're like how badly Do you miscalibrate a fucking Jack The Giant Slayer movie that 200 million

[02:08:23] Dollars is a calamity Not just an underperformance but a calamity Divisions are gonna get like Completely shut down at Warner Brothers because of this movie. It also feels like Jack and the Beanstalk is one of those stories That people have kept trying to make into

[02:08:37] A thing and it never works. Who gives a shit It feels like it should work. Yes He climbs up a beanstalk and kills a giant It's golden. I just Feel like anytime someone's like Have I got a pitch for you. Yeah

[02:08:49] You know that fairy tale. I'm like nah Get the fuck out of here That's not a blockbuster. I've definitely said this Before on the podcast but just Everyone knows Jack and the Beanstalk. So what So what. It doesn't mean they're like I gotta see that. Right

[02:09:03] I do wanna see a big beanstalk Everyone knows diarrhea. We've all met diarrhea We don't wanna see a fucking movie about it A lot of bad things we all know. Speaking of Diarrhea, number two at the box office I just wanna say the one thing that is insane

[02:09:15] To consider With everything we know now Bryan Singer attaches himself developing Jack the Giant Slayer And then he's like I'm ready to return To X-Men. I'm gonna do X-Men first class Yeah. They wanted him to do X-Men first class and Warner Brothers was

[02:09:31] Like we will sue you if you leave Jack the Giant Slayer. We need to make Jack the Giant Slayer. And we need you To do it. That movie could have been shut down So easily. Everyone would have Gotten out of this. Right. And two studios were

[02:09:43] Fighting over who got to make a 200 Million dollar movie by a guy who doesn't like showing Up on set Number two at the box office A comedy hit In its fourth week it has made 107 Million dollars. Is it Identity thief? It is identity Thief. People forget

[02:10:01] Lisa McCarthy. How robust the McCarthy run Was. And Bateman Right? Yeah. Bateman's Era of what's the title of the movie Playing the guy who's like Well that obviously Playing the Play the me That watched a costco on the My crazy uncle poster. Yes Bateman despite never feeling

[02:10:23] Like a comedy A-list movie Star had a surprisingly solid Run in comedy movies right before They ended and he just went to prestige Streaming TV before anyone. And then He won the Emmy for directing Ozark And made the identity thief Poster face when he won. Best director

[02:10:39] Of his life. Smartless Yeah but I was going to Say it is funny you look at the title of the Jason Bateman hits and they are All just first pass titles. What's This movie about? Horrible bosses, an identity Thief, game night

[02:10:53] So good in game night. Office Christmas party Every one of them is just. You're not wrong. The title is Not a lot of focus groups. I think he kind of Cracked it though where it's like you know Exactly what this movie is. The title is

[02:11:03] Describing the thing and Jason Bateman's Head tilted. He's in couples therapy right? He's a good I want to see that guy struggle around that thing Yes. We're moving on to number four at the box office No sorry number three at the box office New this week. Teen comedy

[02:11:15] Or not teen actually because it's about people Turning a certain age This is a forgotten Well man of a certain age was a TV show Not a bad one. 21 and over 21 and over I forgot that movie. John Lucas and Scott Moore's directorial debut

[02:11:31] One of the. Starring the big three. Miles Teller Skyler Astin and Justin Sean What if the men from men of a certain age Starring 21 and over? Who's Brower Romano. I think 21 and over with a sort of Supernatural big style twist of They've been waiting to be

[02:11:47] Old enough to drink their whole life And now they're getting it in middle age Like they all wake up and they're 47 But their IDs work. I mean I just. How much do you think 21 and over Made domestic? 25 Yeah Number four at the box office

[02:12:03] Is maybe Dwayne Johnson's best film Performance that's not like Painting Gain That's not Painting Gain. Best starring Role. Uh Highly underrated film. I think you like this Not Southland Tales. It's Snitch. Not Southland Tales Which is a good movie. But I feel like he's sort of supporting

[02:12:17] That. Right it's an ensemble piece The film is Snitch. Right Snitch I love. Rick Roman was Smith. John Bernthal is Fucking unbelievable That is an early Bernthal where you're like This guy. Right. Like what the Fuck. You know the guy from the class is

[02:12:31] Going off here. Yes no that's This house is not well built Yes I was like. Turned into a bodybuilder He should be winning an Oscar For this performance. He's quietly the lead of the movie And he's unbelievable Um yeah Snitch. Snitch fun. Alright number five A horror sequel

[02:12:49] Uh with a hilarious title Hmm Sort of an oxymoronic title Uh Oxymoronic Uh is it cause it has like dead And alive in the same thing. No Something like that what? Is it a two? It's a two. It's a part two And it's a subtitle

[02:13:09] Is it The Last Exorcism 2 Oh okay. The Last Exorcism Part 2 You told me it was The Last Exorcism They should have pulled the marigold And call it The Second to Last Exorcism Or something like that. You just own it You know. That's number five

[02:13:25] Opening number five. Not a very good job You've also got something called Escape from Planet Earth What the fuck is that? That's a Brendan Fraser Weinstein company Animated film. You are correct Yeah. Jesus Uh something called Safe Haven. Is that like a That's the insane Lossy Halsum

[02:13:41] From Julianne Hough. Josh Duhamel Correct. Lossy Halsum just directed It's a Sparks. It's a Sparks It's like a weird twist in it. It has quite a twist What's that? 9-11 Yeah. All of them Haven wasn't so safe after all. Right. Josh Duhamel

[02:13:55] Was 9-11. She fell in love with the embodiment Of 9-11. What is the thing? No it's a Thing Uh Kobe Smulders. Someone's a ghost Someone's a ghost. Someone's a ghost Julianne Hough moves to this town and Kobe Smulders Is her like best friend in the romantic

[02:14:09] Drama giving her advice on dating this guy And then you find out it is Uh Duhamel's dead wife Who has spoken. Who's nudging her towards Like make my husband happy. So he's happy Nicholas Sparks wrote it. He saw the Sixth Sense and woke up in like a blind

[02:14:23] Like panic and just like wrote This book in the morning. Yes Uh Safe Haven. She's nudging Him to a safe haven. What if a haven was safe? Uh also you've got A Good Day to Die Hard Bad? More like a bad day to die hard. Okay I agree

[02:14:39] Silver Linings Playbook. Still Hanging around after four or five months That movie was a big hit. It was People just wanted to see Robert De Niro going I got a gamble I bet the Eagles again I remember my dad being

[02:14:53] Like that's really not working at the box office After it had been out for like two months and I was Like watch the second it gets the fucking Oscar Nominations Weinstein's gonna like throttle this Thing he's gonna hit the noth button

[02:15:03] He did it. He hit the noth button. And suddenly it then made like Another 110 million dollars Um and you've also got Dark Skies Uh the Keri Russell Alien horror movie. I fully Forgot about that. I think it's come up on this podcast before

[02:15:15] And you do not know it last It's not a good movie but I like it. Oh you like it? I feel it's not good. I feel similarly about it To the fucking uh Dreamcatcher Movie where like. Dreamcatcher's good That's David's favorite creation

[02:15:27] I've seen that movie like six times. I don't know why Like three times but still More than once Um Stoker we're done Talking about that yeah it didn't really go anywhere And um Park takes a few Years off I would say because Handmaiden is what 2018? Yeah. 2016

[02:15:43] Uh you're right it's 2016 so he doesn't take that long No and also. And that's a real Amazon In their sort of like we're patrons Of the arts. We're giving Good filmmakers more money than anyone else Would give them to do weird things. And the thing about

[02:15:55] That movie is he adapts what people thought was an Unadaptable book and totally changes Its context. Right he completely Yeah. Messes with it which is probably What was the move Makes an masterpiece. I agree. And also To your point maybe the only Part time work movie with like

[02:16:11] A happy ending For how fucked up most of that movie Is. It does kind of leave you On a good note. That's the one movie that has catharsis Because the only way women can be happy Is to be with each other. Yeah. It's true

[02:16:23] It's true about murder. Yeah Murder or lesbians Or both. Don't tell them that I'm like I'm single I'm trying to If they know that other women are an option What chance do I have Emily I feel like you have a thousand

[02:16:37] Things to plug. I do. Can I tell you An Aaron Sorkin story Yes I feel like I save up anecdotes For when I come on here like I'm fucking Somebody going on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno Just like my random encounters with

[02:16:51] Celebrity culture. I like to imagine Ben like pre interviewing you And being like that's a good couch story. Yeah I a couple years ago Being the Ricardos was about to Come out. It was the day that the trailer Dropped but also the day that he gave an

[02:17:05] Interview where he was like I couldn't find Someone Cuban American to play Ricky you know that's just too hard By the way being the Ricardos being released Is like Nicole Kidman letting India Stoker leave her home Just be like just go out I can't

[02:17:19] Control the damage you'd cause anymore. Hola Lucy It was just weird that he Was like I'm gonna play it like Salazar His face was deteriorating He uh so I but I did a tweet that was basically Like I can't believe Aaron Sorkin Is redoing Studio 60 on the

[02:17:35] Sunset Strip but about I love Lucy So this idea that this TV show is that important Is actually true. Right So he gets to be like self important about it Anyway I just did the tweet forgot about it That afternoon Aaron Sorkin Emailed me and I like confirmed

[02:17:49] This with other people who've emailed with him And he just writes to me and he's like wait until You see the movie you never know And I like agonized Over how to respond to this So uh This is the thing that I write back to him

[02:18:03] Think about this all day Mr. Sorkin I am a trans woman And I worry not infrequently about if The world actually sees me as a woman Which is to say getting a random email From you in response to a shit post tweet

[02:18:15] I made in about 5 seconds was an incredibly Validating experience Best of luck on the movie Did Mr. Sorkin reply He wrote back indeed I had mentioned at the end of that I like Jessica Chastain In Molly's Game Couldn't agree more about Jessica be well

[02:18:33] And I hope I get to meet you one day We haven't actually met but I was like There's two resolutions To this story which is one I start dating Aaron Sorkin or two He writes a movie where a trans woman falls into a pool

[02:18:45] And I'm like that was me I inspired that I think that The latter is better for you Yeah Would it be better for you to date Aaron Sorkin I would say I feel like Aaron Sorkin and I would have a Real great contentious relationship

[02:19:01] The banter would be great Well you nailed that email That was my plug You're one of the best writers out there Everything you do be it email Be it long form Writing journalistic writing Be it fiction writing It's all excellent I didn't start the ICS

[02:19:21] I didn't start the ICS which is too bad I wish I had Anyone who started that If you could turn back time Would probably be so proud They'd be bringing up at all times I mean honestly Sounds like something a teenager came up with

[02:19:37] You can find me on twitter Still at Emily St. Jams I'm also on blue sky if you're on that It's a good site I'm on the Co-host of the podcast Yellow Jackets 1992 We're talking about the movies of 1992 Having a blast I write on the tv show Yellow Jackets

[02:19:59] I worked there one day It counts You should go watch that Arden still exists I'm not on that anymore It's fun We're recording this far out enough in advance That maybe by the time this episode comes out The writer strike has resolved itself

[02:20:17] This is coming out August 20th By then everybody will be on strike The country will be on strike Joe Biden's on strike Zaslav's still just Max though Just gotta perfect it first I also sold a novel That's coming out in January 2025

[02:20:35] Which is when I will next be on the podcast Just call in my shop I forgot to mention Ben and I went out on Sunday night And stayed out too late But missed the Sunday night So just to really carbonate this episode

[02:20:49] You guys couldn't even watch the fucking Succession finale My marathon last night was back to back to back Watching Succession finale, Barry finale, Stoker It left me in a very specific head space Stoker's kind of chill compared to those other two I still haven't seen the Succession finale

[02:21:03] Because I came to town to see Taylor Swift She was at the same time as the Succession finale I'm gonna get her on this show I promise Yeah, oh absolutely Come on, blank check Taylor Should we bleep all of that out? Yes, and we should probably commit suicide

[02:21:26] Yep, absolutely We're doing the best we've ever done And this has been a great episode in our great series You're the best, Emily Been too long, we'll have you on again sooner We're not gonna wait for the book 2022 was the year you didn't have an Emily

[02:21:40] On this podcast And if you're not gonna have me or Yoshida You gotta get Blunk, you gotta get Nussbaum You gotta get somebody, you gotta get an Emily every year I saw Blunt on the street The other day She fucking looked Unbelievable

[02:21:56] She did, but she looked at me sort of like She was trying to figure out She was trying to find the entrance to Eataly There's so many entrances And she couldn't find the right door And then she was looking around and she like clocked me

[02:22:08] Directly in the sort of like, do you know where? And I just like withered But not even, I'm not even saying like She looked really hot She looked like the coolest person I have ever seen My friend Crystal, co-creator Used to work at the Arclight

[02:22:26] And would like serve her and John Krasinski Often, and they'd just be like Totally chill going to see a movie Very beautiful people Come on the pod Emily every year Part two recently It's okay, it's fine Bye Thank you to Layne Montgomery and the Great American Novel

[02:23:14] For our theme song Joe Bowen, Pat Reynolds for our artwork You can go to BlankCheckPod.com For links to some real nerdy shit Including our Patreon Blank Check Special features Where we do commentaries on film series And other sort of bonus stuff

[02:23:30] We're gonna be doing the little drummer girl over there The aforementioned, his only other English language work The AMC miniseries And schedule wise Ben At the time this is coming out Are we tail end of oceans Or are we on to the next thing we're doing Let's see

[02:23:48] I'm looking ahead at our schedule And I am seeing That this comes out on August 20th And that means That we Are Now in the midst Of our oceans We're swimming across the oceans We're doing laps We're doing the archive Of Patreon that we opened up

[02:24:12] Our free Patreon membership Where every 10 days we unlock an episode From 3 years ago We are now Into Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol We're zooming Literally those are episodes We're on zoom Tune in next week for I can't fucking wait One of my favorite movies of the last 10 years

[02:24:39] Shout out something? The Blankies discord One of the nicest places on the internet Just chill people in there Compared to like every other thing Anytime a thing gets a fanbase The fans are like whatever Discord's really nice, really chill That's very nice to hear

[02:24:57] Well that's, keep it up Good work everybody But also let's not give them too much praise Because then they'll start to get cocky And they'll turn into an awful place You could always be better And as always Remember to flood the International Cinephile Society inbox

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