Morvern Callar with Emily Yoshida

Mommy's back! Emily Yoshida joins the gang to talk about 2002's Morvern Callar, a surprisingly tender film about grief, starting over, and taking a Jet2 Holiday. We're chatting about Samantha Morton's unconventional star quality, our personal history with mixtapes, and the Fantastic Beasts franchise for some reason. Plus, Ben reveals his love of seaside snow, Griffin adds some context from the source material (or whatever he could translate from the Scottish dialect), and everyone agrees that Morvern did nothing wrong. Watch Shogun Season 1 https://www.fxnetworks.com/shows/shogun/viewers-guide/watch-us Check out the official Shogun podcast https://www.fxnetworks.com/shows/shogun/viewers-guide/podcast Listen to the Emily’s Traitors Podcast: First To Breakfast https://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=AwrFBg8DenJp6yoAHvYPxQt.;_ylu=Y29sbwNiZjEEcG9zAzEEdnRpZAMEc2VjA3Ny/RV=2/RE=1770319619/RO=10/RU=https%3a%2f%2ffirsttobreakfast.substack.com%2f/RK=2/RS=kJE. XW1fVNtaWivvyz7F42DABaU- Watch Carnival of Souls https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055830/ Watch the Romano Tours SNL Sketch https://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=AwrEtw3XmXNp3HcEiz4PxQt.;_ylu=Y29sbwNiZjEEcG9zAzEEdnRpZAMEc2VjA3Ny/RV=2/RE=1770393304/RO=10/RU=https%3a%2f%2fwww.youtube.com%2fwatch%3fv%3dTbwlC2B-BIg/RK=2/RS=zmpLSIXsx2V.3Ej63poTNt6Yd5M- Sign up for Check Book https://blankcheckpod.substack.com/welcome, the Blank Check newsletter featuring even more “real nerdy shit” to feed your pop culture obsession. Dossier excerpts, film biz AND burger reports, and even more exclusive content you won’t want to miss out on. Join our Patreon for franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. http://www.patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter https://x.com/blankcheckpod?lang=en, Instagram https://www.instagram.com/blankcheckpod/?hl=en, Threads https://www.threads.net/@blankcheckpod?xmt=AQGzctAh4mbWTwYzCV1pzNT6AMV9o99EOfymi8TLR5mTde0 and Facebook https://www.facebook.com/blankcheckpodcast/! Buy some real nerdy merch https://kinshipgoods.com/blankcheck Connect with other Blankies on our Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/blankies/s/gpcOkQr8Sv or Discord https://discord.gg/Q6YGSR3JrA For anything else, check out BlankCheckPod.com https://www.blankcheckpod.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Griffin Newman?

  David.

• 0:03David Sims?

  Yep.

• 0:03Griffin Newman?

  We did a live show.

• 0:04David Sims?

  Yeah, remember?

• 0:05Griffin Newman?

  Ranking Scorsese at the Bell House in Brooklyn. We did the definitive power ranking of Martin Scorsese things.

• 0:12David Sims?

  Uh, it was so fun. Uh, it was very silly.

• 0:15Griffin Newman?

  Ben and Marie were with us and they're with us right now.

• 0:18David Sims?

  Yeah, hey.

• 0:18Speaker 02

  Hey, everyone, or should I say, oh?

• 0:20David Sims?

  Oh.

• 0:22Griffin Newman?

  And thanks to our friends at Dynasty Typewriter. It was livestreamed for the first time ever. But also, the replay is still up there, but only until October 30th.

• 0:31Speaker 03

  So just a few more days.

• 0:33David Sims?

  Yes.

• 0:33Speaker 03

  You can get it at dynasty.tv.

• 0:36David Sims?

  Dynasty.tv.

• 0:37Speaker 03

  It's $20. We had a blast and the Spreadmaster really got to work.

• 0:43David Sims?

  Oh, yeah. I was moving things around.

• 0:45Griffin Newman?

  Laptop was on.

• 0:46Speaker 02

  I don't know if I'd have seen you that happy.

• 0:48Griffin Newman?

  You were thrilled. You were like a pick and share.

• 0:50David Sims?

  I was locked in.

• 0:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, very locked in and you were funny.

• 0:53David Sims?

  Thank you. You were funny. You were also funny.

• 0:56Griffin Newman?

  Oh, thank you.

• 0:57David Sims?

  And if you want to see like, you know, Griffin's shine box on camera, it's the only way to see it.

• 1:02Griffin Newman?

  You might see me shine Marie's shoes.

• 1:04David Sims?

  Exactly.

• 1:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, if you're into that sort of content.

• 1:07Griffin Newman?

  If that gets you off.

• 1:09Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:10Speaker 03

  So once again, that's at dynasty.tv.

• 1:39Griffin Newman?

  I wrote it for you. I love you. Be brave. I left money in the bank for the funeral. The card is in the drawer. You know the code. Keep the podcast for yourself. Now, I'm choosing not to do a Scottish accent.

• 1:52David Sims?

  I was literally about to say.

• 1:53Griffin Newman?

  Cause it's typed.

• 1:55David Sims?

  It is typed and, and, and I don't think you have a perfect Scottish accent.

• 1:58Griffin Newman?

  Oh, really? Is that?

• 1:59David Sims?

  Maybe you do. Maybe you do. Maybe.

• 2:01Griffin Newman?

  I wrote it for you. I love you. Be brave.

• 2:05David Sims?

  Now it sounds like it's from like the 17th century.

• 2:08Griffin Newman?

  I left money in the bank for the funeral.

• 2:12Griffin Newman?

  The card is in the drawer, you know the code.

• 2:14David Sims?

  Ben, you said you wanted.

• 2:15Griffin Newman?

  Olgers are like onions.

• 2:17David Sims?

  Well, we'll introduce the podcast.

• 2:18Griffin Newman?

  Keep the podcast for yourself.

• 2:19David Sims?

  Ben, you, you said you wanted Griffin to do some clickety clack keyboard stuff.

• 2:25Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, but I feel like that's a post job.

• 2:27David Sims?

  And I said, well, you could put that in. You said, I miss those little keyboards. Well, remember when I had the clickety clack keyboard in COVID and you guys were like, David, we can't hear a single thing you're saying because clickety clackety clack anytime you Google something.

• 2:39Griffin Newman?

  There is a reason we complain about that. It was because it sucked.

• 2:43David Sims?

  I think it was fair if you'd complain about it. I'm joking.

• 2:45Speaker 03

  It's also because in this movie, there's a little bit of clickety clack. When you were using your keyboard, it was kind of a little bit more like.

• 2:53David Sims?

  Sometimes I'm looking at something. I, how dare you. I, for it was very.

• 2:57Speaker 03

  Sounded like a damn room of monkeys using a typewriter.

• 3:01David Sims?

  Honey going over a waterfall.

• 3:03Griffin Newman?

  We cannot overstate how loud and persistent.

• 3:05David Sims?

  It was one of those like COVID things where you're.

• 3:07Griffin Newman?

  It was metal machine music.

• 3:08David Sims?

  In COVID, I don't know if you remember this guest who I suppose is in speaking.

• 3:13Griffin Newman?

  Do you remember COVID? I don't know if you remember that.

• 3:16Speaker 02

  Wait, what?

• 3:17Griffin Newman?

  The novel coronavirus.

• 3:19David Sims?

  Where you're suddenly are like, I think I need to buy something to this week to, you know, so that the wolves don't bark at the door. And then like you, you go on like wire cutter or whatever. And they're like, you know what? Rocks is a mechanical keyboard. And you're like, maybe that will bring me joy.

• 3:35Speaker 02

  I think I got a similar keyboard during.

• 3:38David Sims?

  And you get one, you're like, clack, clack, clack. This is fun. You do a podcast.

• 3:42Griffin Newman?

  Wire cutter said, no, not for professional podcasters.

• 3:46Speaker 02

  Right. I mean, you don't have a directional mic situation.

• 3:49David Sims?

  I do. I think they were just hearing it honestly more than anyone else. Yeah. It was quite distracting.

• 3:55Griffin Newman?

  A lot and we cannot overstate how loud it was.

• 3:58Speaker 02

  You've always got to Google a thing or two.

• 4:00David Sims?

  I think you guys might not even remember the early days of COVID. We didn't even have our now fired researcher, JJ Birch. And so I was still like Googling like, what happened in Back to the Future?

• 4:12Griffin Newman?

  It's so tough. We wake up every morning and be like, I wish I had someone to fire.

• 4:17Speaker 02

  Wait, did you you fired?

• 4:19Griffin Newman?

  We fired JJ a couple of times a week. It's a bit we stole from Doughboys. I realized this. It took too long for me to realize.

• 4:24David Sims?

  I don't think, I know, because I think I was the one initially doing it. If I stole it from Doughboys, it was subconscious.

• 4:29Griffin Newman?

  I think it's, yes, I don't think it's, I think much like.

• 4:32David Sims?

  I just fired it because I, you know, JJ, he just kind of grinds like ears and I want him out of this.

• 4:37Griffin Newman?

  Well, he's bad at his job and he must be stopped.

• 4:39Speaker 02

  Does he listen to the podcast?

• 4:41David Sims?

  Subservicially, he's like our biggest fan.

• 4:43Speaker 02

  Has he heard your notes? Because, you know, he should shape up.

• 4:45Griffin Newman?

  He will text us five times within the first minute of this episode.

• 4:48David Sims?

  Wait, what was the Doughboys bit? Who were they fired?

• 4:51Griffin Newman?

  They were firing Yu Song all the time.

• 4:52Speaker 02

  All right.

• 4:53Griffin Newman?

  I don't think we're consciously.

• 4:54David Sims?

  Yeah, it would be like, right.

• 4:56Speaker 02

  That's old school.

• 4:57David Sims?

  But then Yu Song was dead, I feel like.

• 4:59Griffin Newman?

  The ghost of Yu Song.

• 5:00David Sims?

  Right, yeah.

• 5:01Griffin Newman?

  I was just gonna say, do you remember when we did the King Cast and we did that on Riverside? Where we weren't on Zoom, there was no.

• 5:06David Sims?

  Right, I think Ben wasn't, were you even participating in that? You probably spared that nightmare of.

• 5:10Griffin Newman?

  It was just David.

• 5:11David Sims?

  Yes, but, yeah.

• 5:12Griffin Newman?

  And.

• 5:13David Sims?

  Not the show, the show's great. It was just the nightmare of the technical amounts.

• 5:16Griffin Newman?

  Like 40 minutes into the episode, I think it was the dearly departed Scott Wampler, who went, I'm sorry, David, what the fuck is happening? Because of the mechanical keyboard. He couldn't see it and it was just 40 minutes.

• 5:30David Sims?

  R.I.P. just got a wonderful guy.

• 5:31Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 5:32David Sims?

  The best.

• 5:33Griffin Newman?

  A wonderful man who did many great things. Top of the list was calling out your bullshit. One of his finest works.

• 5:41David Sims?

  What's this podcast, Griffin?

• 5:42Griffin Newman?

  This podcast is called Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin.

• 5:44David Sims?

  I'm David.

• 5:45Griffin Newman?

  It's a podcast about filmography, these directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce. Baby, this is a me series I've been wanting to do for so long.

• 6:00David Sims?

  Mm hmm.

• 6:01Griffin Newman?

  One of my favorite living filmmakers.

• 6:02David Sims?

  Mm hmm. I feel like we, years ago, were basically kind of like, her next movie? Shake hands, whatever it is, we're doing her. We're knocking her out.

• 6:12Speaker 02

  Well, that would have been what, seven years ago? So.

• 6:14Griffin Newman?

  You were never, here's 2017.

• 6:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:16David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 6:16Griffin Newman?

  And it's basically, when I see that, I'm like, I'm calling it next one.

• 6:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:20Griffin Newman?

  And she, she basically works on a once every seven years clip, kind of? This is a mini series called, We Need to Post About Cap.

• 6:29David Sims?

  You can do it.

• 6:30Griffin Newman?

  This is a mini series called, We Need to Pod About Cast Vin.

• 6:34David Sims?

  There you go.

• 6:35Speaker 02

  See, if you didn't trip over it the first time, and you would know it wasn't a good mini series.

• 6:38Griffin Newman?

  Exactly. That you need to struggle. That's what these movies are about. They're about working through struggle. Or I'd say that we're accurately about staying in the struggle.

• 6:48David Sims?

  This is called, You Need, We Need to Pod About Cast.

• 6:52Griffin Newman?

  We Need to Pod About Cast Vin.

• 6:55Speaker 02

  And we do.

• 6:56Griffin Newman?

  We do.

• 6:57Speaker 02

  Urgently.

• 6:58Griffin Newman?

  Yes. But we'll get to that. We'll get to that next week. Talk about a big gap. Today, we're talking about our second film.

• 7:08Griffin Newman?

  What the fuck just happened?

• 7:09Speaker 03

  Did you almost spill your Diet Coke?

• 7:12David Sims?

  Yes.

• 7:13Speaker 03

  Easy Sims.

• 7:15Speaker 02

  Raging out over there.

• 7:16David Sims?

  It's fine. If this laptop gets busted, I can buy a new one with a mechanical keyboard.

• 7:22Speaker 03

  Sorry. God, the E is hitting everybody in this room different.

• 7:24Griffin Newman?

  I know. Really. And we are strobing the lights in here. We should mention, and we're recording in a bathtub.

• 7:30Speaker 02

  Shit, I should have brought my strobe light. That would have been amazing.

• 7:33Griffin Newman?

  I had that thought while watching this of like, it's really a shame that Dalton Trumbo didn't live long enough to see Morvern Caller.

• 7:39David Sims?

  That's true. Finally, inappropriate amount of bathtubs.

• 7:43Speaker 02

  And writing.

• 7:44Griffin Newman?

  And writing.

• 7:44Speaker 02

  And clickety clacking.

• 7:45Griffin Newman?

  Bathtubs and novels.

• 7:48David Sims?

  Yeah, Dalton Trumbo would have loved my clickety clack face. That would have been his favorite face of the podcast. He would have loved it.

• 7:54Griffin Newman?

  Today, we're talking about 2002's Morvern Caller, and our guest today, returning to the show long overdue. And I've seen it. I've seen it over the last year.

• 8:02David Sims?

  Not, but last night, I saw on our Reddit, someone saying, where's mama?

• 8:07Griffin Newman?

  Just last night, what's been going on? And she mentioned to me the other night, she was like, did you guys lose my fucking number? Why didn't I get called in for Fargo?

• 8:15Speaker 02

  You guys have gotten too big for me.

• 8:16Griffin Newman?

  Why didn't I? No, no, the answer is, we knew, like, there's a new Ramsey coming.

• 8:21David Sims?

  Yeah, that was it.

• 8:23Griffin Newman?

  We're saving the spot.

• 8:24David Sims?

  We had actually written you in without telling you, which we sometimes will do that. Like, someone will text me being like, hey, if you are doing that direct, I'd be interested. I'd be like, oh, sorry, we already wrote you in. I wouldn't even tell you. Sorry.

• 8:34Griffin Newman?

  It's one of the most iron locked guest bookings we've ever had, like Hannah Ratliff doing Altman's Popeye. It's just etched in stone.

• 8:40Speaker 02

  Incredible.

• 8:41Griffin Newman?

  As something that must happen, and now it is finally happening today. Emily Yoshida, mother of blankies.

• 8:48Speaker 02

  Did somebody miss their mommy?

• 8:51Griffin Newman?

  Writer of Shogun, writer on Shogun.

• 8:54Speaker 02

  On Shogun.

• 8:55Griffin Newman?

  Host of the Shogun podcast.

• 8:56Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 8:57David Sims?

  And then what's your traders podcast called?

• 8:59Speaker 02

  First to Breakfast, a traders podcast, which will be bringing it back as far as I know for the next season. So.

• 9:06Griffin Newman?

  Mama's home.

• 9:07David Sims?

  Do you do American traders or British traders?

• 9:09Speaker 02

  We do American traders. We thought about doing it for British traders right afterwards because I think they went straight into it. Yeah, it went straight into the British season and it was like, it was too. Guys, did you know that podcasting is hard work?

• 9:21David Sims?

  Oh, it's a lot. And the British one is non celebs, but now they've done a celeb edition.

• 9:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, they just, I think wrapped up.

• 9:29David Sims?

  And the American one is celebs.

• 9:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, it started off kind of a mix of celebs and regs and then it became just celebs. And now they're going to do a regular season. I have put in my application. I know that everybody's very worried. And they want to make sure that I am on the debut, um, normie season of, of traders, but you know, still no word back. So hopefully they're listening to this right now. Um, I, I, I can show my devotion to Scottish culture through this podcast today. So.

• 9:55Griffin Newman?

  The celeb season was mostly past reality TV show people, right?

• 10:00David Sims?

  The British, and that's the British ecosystem of reality TV where they're like, and now celebrity Big Brother, who's on it? People from other big brothers.

• 10:09Speaker 02

  All of Ireland.

• 10:10David Sims?

  Celebrities due to their behavior.

• 10:12Griffin Newman?

  And shows that ripped off Big Brother. Now they're going on the mothership.

• 10:15David Sims?

  Right.

• 10:16Griffin Newman?

  It is just fascinating. I'm not commenting on anything new here, but there's an ecosystem of like, if you pop on one reality competition, you basically can just jump around them.

• 10:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:26Griffin Newman?

  In perpetuity.

• 10:27Speaker 02

  You're set up. And if it's a Bravo one, you're set for life. You can go on any Bravo show. You go to BravoCon, you get those appearance fees. It's a whole career.

• 10:35Griffin Newman?

  I feel like for a while it was one and done. It's like, if you're in Survivor, they're not going to let you on the fucking.

• 10:39Speaker 02

  Oh, no.

• 10:40Griffin Newman?

  Amazing race. And now everyone does everything.

• 10:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I think once, uh, Liz Hasselback got on The View, it was just like, oh, wow. You can really go as far as you want with very little talent or.

• 10:51Griffin Newman?

  Absolutely.

• 10:52David Sims?

  Absolutely.

• 10:54Griffin Newman?

  What's she doing or how's it?

• 10:55David Sims?

  What's she doing?

• 10:56Speaker 02

  Nobody needs to know. It's, it's fine.

• 10:58Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I'm sure she's furious about something.

• 11:03Speaker 02

  But I, I mean, as practice for my inevitable turn on, on, on regular people traders, I did have my own. I hosted my own traders game for my birthday this year. And it was pretty fun. So now I have a new, speaking of other careers, I have a new career I can do, which is like mystery dinner party host, part-time mail and coming. So yeah, just putting it out there.

• 11:26Griffin Newman?

  I don't know if you remember.

• 11:27David Sims?

  She wrote a children's book called God's Masterpiece.

• 11:29Speaker 02

  Jesus Christ.

• 11:33Griffin Newman?

  Uh, I don't know if you remember this, but the, the day of your trader's birthday party was when I took a, uh, made a pilgrimage with our mutual friend, Alex Guter, to pick up the David Lynch atmospheric water generator.

• 11:48Speaker 02

  Oh, yes.

• 11:50Griffin Newman?

  He was worried about being able to make it.

• 11:52Speaker 02

  Yes. And that was supposed to end up in my home.

• 11:55Griffin Newman?

  As a temporary resting place.

• 11:57Speaker 02

  As a temporary resting place, which I didn't even know. They, I guess he changed his mind before I was even consulted about. Like surely Emily would not want to house this water generator. I was like, what are you talking about? There's a package that has a mailing label with David Lynch's address on it and I could have it in my home.

• 12:12Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 12:13Speaker 02

  But I ended up seeing it recently, actually at the office he's keeping it in now.

• 12:16Griffin Newman?

  It's pretty incredible.

• 12:17Speaker 02

  Took a photo.

• 12:18David Sims?

  Funny if we rented a whole office just for, and people could like, just go look upon it.

• 12:24Griffin Newman?

  Will you assure them it's like, it's pretty cool to see in person?

• 12:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I, I did a little bit of eye rolling when I was told about it at first, and then I saw it in person. I was like, this is cool. I don't even know what it is. It's a water generator, but uh, yeah, it's, it's big. It's like this.

• 12:40Griffin Newman?

  Let's not oversell the biggest.

• 12:42David Sims?

  The thing about it is it's huge. The footprint of this thing is not small.

• 12:48Griffin Newman?

  And even though it hasn't been open, it's louder than a mechanical keyboard.

• 12:53Griffin Newman?

  Emily Morvyn Keller.

• 12:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:56Griffin Newman?

  Is it your number one favorite movie of all time? Or is it kind of just like your heart song?

• 13:00Speaker 02

  Well, I was.

• 13:01Griffin Newman?

  Definitive Emily.

• 13:02Speaker 02

  It is, it is, uh, it is a top five movie for me. I would say top five, like it's up there. I think that, um, I was looking through my blank, blank check appearances and I'm pretty sure that it's like this and Castle in the Sky are probably, this, this might well be my favorite movie that I've ever come on to talk to you guys about.

• 13:24David Sims?

  This is the 16th film you've discussed on this show.

• 13:27Griffin Newman?

  Sweet 16.

• 13:28David Sims?

  If we're including Babe, which we should.

• 13:30Griffin Newman?

  We should.

• 13:31David Sims?

  He's a gal.

• 13:32Griffin Newman?

  We must, yes. It'll do.

• 13:34Speaker 02

  It will do.

• 13:36David Sims?

  Uh, and you've, you've talked about movies you love. Welcome to Marwin, welcome to Marwin, Marwin.

• 13:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, welcome to Morvyn Keller.

• 13:45Griffin Newman?

  Welcome.

• 13:46David Sims?

  I mean, I'm sure you're, you're, you know, you really, you do really like The Handmaiden. You really.

• 13:50Speaker 02

  I do, yeah. I actually re-watched that.

• 13:52David Sims?

  But I mean, like.

• 13:53Griffin Newman?

  You're a road.

• 13:54Speaker 02

  No, I've had some really, really fun ones and movies that I hold near and dear to my heart, but this one is. Yeah. Castle in the Sky is very special to me and this one is, uh, yeah.

• 14:04David Sims?

  Just the Emily Bible, if I'm reading, you know, like those are chapters in it.

• 14:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. I, I hope that is a compliment, uh, considering everything goes down in this film. But yeah, I would say.

• 14:15Griffin Newman?

  Depiction is not endorsement.

• 14:17Speaker 02

  In my case, I think it is.

• 14:19Griffin Newman?

  Okay, yeah, we like her and we think she's cool.

• 14:21Speaker 02

  I think she did nothing wrong. Everything she did is good.

• 14:24Griffin Newman?

  It was right, actually. It was very correct.

• 14:26Speaker 02

  The more I watch it, the more time that goes by, the more I lean toward that opinion of Morvyn Keller did nothing wrong. I think I kind of, because the whole thing with, we'll get into the plot, but the whole thing with Lana and the betrayal involved there is kind of played for laughs for so much of it. I think the first couple of times I saw it and also I probably didn't see it with like subtitles the first time I saw it. So a lot of stuff is easy to get lost in, in the sound mix if you're not a native Scottish speaker. But I think, I think, yeah, the more clarity I have about that and like think more about their friendship from leave, yeah, that girl.

• 15:02Griffin Newman?

  Was it a birthday or was it when you were leaving New York that you did the kind of like Morvern Callar screening?

• 15:07Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. No, that was really fun. That was, uh, so they, I think at the time there was maybe one or two tops, like existing prints of it in circulation and they happened to be, it was making the rounds. I think it must have been around, we need to, uh, no, we need to, um, you were never really here.

• 15:24Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 15:24Speaker 02

  And so it was at a couple of theaters here, but I remember they did a, I think it was a BAM. They, they, they showed it there and I just sort of, I remember this was back in the days of Twitter being a place that people hung out and occasionally had a nice time. I, uh, I, I basically was like, okay, I'm picking the screening, you know, anybody who follows me, let's get tickets and, you know, let's hang out afterwards and talk about Morvern Callar.

• 15:45Griffin Newman?

  It, it was basically a like loudly announced, this is important to me.

• 15:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:49Griffin Newman?

  I invite anyone else to come experience this with me.

• 15:52Speaker 02

  Well, and it was such a, there was the scarcity thing with it then because there wasn't, um, a 4K out. The only way to watch it.

• 15:59Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 16:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. The new one, that, that's pretty new. That came out within the last five years.

• 16:05Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 16:05David Sims?

  And that is, uh, uh, sold out, like, you know.

• 16:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. I got two copies.

• 16:10Griffin Newman?

  Hell, yeah.

• 16:10Speaker 02

  Um, one is still sealed at home. Cause I, you know, you, you never know these things. We, we, we've learned our lesson so many times now where things going in and out of circulation.

• 16:19Griffin Newman?

  Well, this was a movie with like defunct distributors.

• 16:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:22Griffin Newman?

  It like fell into like legal, like kind of, uh, ambiguity for a while.

• 16:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. I, I don't know the whole timeline of that. I just know that for the longest time, the only way you could watch it was like the shittiest transfer imaginable on Amazon Prime. Um, like just off, like this is a beautiful movie, among other things, just like cinematography, all the above, the music. It's all stuff that you actually want to have like a pretty, you know, faithful thing of it. It looked like it was like, you know, something out of a cracker back, uh, cracker, cracker barrel box?

• 16:56Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 16:56Speaker 02

  A cracker barrel, something out of a cracker barrel.

• 16:58David Sims?

  And the, the woke cracker.

• 17:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:01David Sims?

  The later one where he has.

• 17:04Speaker 02

  Not even a base cracker barrel.

• 17:06David Sims?

  Or what, what, what did they even change? They just.

• 17:08Griffin Newman?

  They got into the guy.

• 17:09Speaker 02

  The guy.

• 17:10Griffin Newman?

  And the barrel. It was just the tech.

• 17:12Speaker 02

  Because they hate men.

• 17:13Griffin Newman?

  They hate men and they hate barrels.

• 17:16David Sims?

  Barrels, the most masculine of water containers.

• 17:20Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, you know, in a pinch, it's also like a dress if you're a guy who loses his clothes in a fire.

• 17:25David Sims?

  I've been in that situation where I had to reach for my barrel.

• 17:29Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, the Blu-ray didn't come out until 2022 and there were less than 3,000 copies made. And there's one on eBay for $80, but this movie is like rentable and streamable again.

• 17:39David Sims?

  Yeah, you can watch, uh, yeah.

• 17:42Speaker 02

  Can you, it's like on iTunes or whatever you can.

• 17:44Griffin Newman?

  It's on Amazon Prime right now. It seems rentable.

• 17:47Speaker 02

  I don't think the Amazon, I still think that the Amazon Prime one is shitty. I could be wrong.

• 17:51Griffin Newman?

  You know what? I was pulling it up to try to get the text, the opening text, and it was far worse than what we had just watched.

• 17:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:58Griffin Newman?

  Like significantly.

• 17:59Speaker 02

  The disc is gorgeous. It's, yeah.

• 18:01David Sims?

  It's not completely vanished at least.

• 18:04Griffin Newman?

  No, it feels like there was, right. They clawed back some clarity of who owns this movie and how they can license it.

• 18:09David Sims?

  Right, because this was an Alliance Atlantis joint?

• 18:12Griffin Newman?

  Yes, but then I was looking, the American distributor was a name I didn't even recognize.

• 18:18David Sims?

  Momentum? That was a UK.

• 18:21Griffin Newman?

  That was a production.

• 18:22David Sims?

  We'll find it. You know what? I'm sure this will be in the dossier unless.

• 18:25Griffin Newman?

  Unless JJ is about to get fired. Uh, when did you see this for the first time, Emily?

• 18:31Speaker 02

  Well, um, I am pretty sure I saw this at, uh, and sometimes I have mixed up memories of this because there was a, a student movie theater at University of Iowa called The Bijou, which still exists, but.

• 18:42Griffin Newman?

  Called the what?

• 18:42Speaker 02

  The Bijou. And it was just in the student union. You could go see, like I saw, you know, a bunch of me gay films. I saw, you know, any art house thing that came through, usually like a year after it had been released. Like we were very, um, but it was a very important place. And I'm, I, I believe that is where I saw this for the first time. And I'm pretty sure I saw it, like I said, without any subtitles, which, um, changes a lot, but I, but the soundtrack was so important to me. I think that they released a disc. I never had that, but I just think like, I was very in my, uh, you know, Boards of Canada, like Warp Records era in high school. And so that plus like the Velvet Underground stuff, all the can stuff.

• 19:27David Sims?

  They did release the soundtrack.

• 19:28Speaker 02

  They did. Yeah.

• 19:30Griffin Newman?

  On cassette?

• 19:30David Sims?

  Yeah, CD.

• 19:31Speaker 02

  It'd be cool if it was cassette. Somebody's gotta do that. Whoever made these bespoke Lewin Davis albums for you has got to get on the Morvern Collar mixtape.

• 19:41Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, Moshe P. Commutant, that feels like a good product. The Morvern Collar mixtape replica with the soundtrack on it.

• 19:48David Sims?

  Get on it.

• 19:49Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 19:49David Sims?

  Mo, get on it.

• 19:51Griffin Newman?

  Had you seen Rackcatcher at that point?

• 19:53Speaker 02

  No, I hadn't. Rackcatcher became a real touch point in film school, actually. Like, I feel like my little club of nerds that I was friends with, we were very much, that was sort of in rotation as far as stuff that was inspirational to us. But I didn't, I hadn't seen it before. I didn't know who Lynn Ramsey was. All I knew that it was this movie with a cool soundtrack and Samantha Morton in it, so.

• 20:16David Sims?

  Right, who is, Samantha Morton was kind of like just starting to pop in a major way.

• 20:21Griffin Newman?

  You know, it's crazy because I was.

• 20:22David Sims?

  You know what's crazy?

• 20:24Griffin Newman?

  Well, you don't know what I'm about to say.

• 20:25David Sims?

  No, no.

• 20:25Griffin Newman?

  You can disagree if you don't think it's crazy, but I'm gonna make the argument.

• 20:28David Sims?

  What is it?

• 20:30Griffin Newman?

  Uh, I almost did like a comma Glocklin, uh, Blue Velvet Dune flip with this. Where I thought of this as being the breakthrough. And you're like, no, this is like three years after the Sweet and Lowdown nomination. This is the same year as Minority Report.

• 20:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's the wild thing.

• 20:45David Sims?

  That's what I mean by the breakout, because with Sweet and Lowdown, it was like she got the deserved nom. Interesting movie. Not a movie I have seen in many, many years. But obviously, Sweet and Lowdown made a nominal sum at the time. It was not a big Woody Allen movie. And then, right, like after that, I think she's mostly in tiny stuff. And she's in Jesus' Son, but that was a little movie. And like, apart from that, like nothing much.

• 21:09Griffin Newman?

  That's the same year as Sweet and Lowdown, though. And then this year is Morvern Collar, Minority Report, and there's one other film?

• 21:14David Sims?

  Uh, the film she got the Oscar nomination for, but in America.

• 21:18Griffin Newman?

  Oh, but that doesn't come out in the States until 2003.

• 21:21David Sims?

  Uh, 2003.

• 21:22Griffin Newman?

  So she gets a nomination the following year. I just always think of this as being her, like, breaking the waves, who the fuck is this?

• 21:29David Sims?

  Absolutely.

• 21:29Griffin Newman?

  And instead, even though it was very much like leveling up, like, oh shit, we didn't know she was this good. She has a nomination under her belt. She had done, uh, British Indies before this. But she is someone who kind of breaks out on TV first. And that leads to her movie castings.

• 21:45David Sims?

  We can talk about it.

• 21:46Griffin Newman?

  We can.

• 21:47David Sims?

  Um, she's in the absolutely incredible 1996 Emma with Kate Beckinsale. As Harriet, you know, as Brittany Murphy.

• 21:56Speaker 02

  As Brittany Murphy. Canonically Brittany Murphy. Yes.

• 22:00David Sims?

  Um, I saw this film in theaters because I saw Rat Catcher, not in theaters, but when it so shortly after it came out, because my mom interviewed Liam Ramsey for Rat Catcher.

• 22:11Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 22:11David Sims?

  Lord knows why. My mom had this phase, I believe it was the great Graham Fuller, who's still a New York Film Critics Circle member. I think Graham was the editor of the New York Daily News Arts Section and Graham is an arty fella. And even though it was the Daily News, which is, you know, a New York tabloid where my mom worked for many years. It used to be a real newspaper. Now it's like nothing, but and, you know, I think it was a less arty set, but he tilted arty for a little while. So when Graham was in charge, he would like, and we lived in England, and he would tell my mom like, hey, go interview this like Scottish director with a sort of vaguely big debut. I mean, Rat Catcher is a true tiny indie, but it did make waves.

• 22:53Griffin Newman?

  It made waves and I feel like it has a reputation as still one of those kind of like definitively important film school movies.

• 23:00David Sims?

  Like, like, like Emily was saying.

• 23:03Griffin Newman?

  That is still kind of discovered by people because.

• 23:05David Sims?

  You know, and she won the BAFTA for like best debut and all that, you know, like there was.

• 23:09Griffin Newman?

  If you're like a young aspiring filmmaker, there are movies like that you can watch where you're like, this is this person's first film. They made it for how little money?

• 23:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:17Griffin Newman?

  And I've never seen a movie like this before.

• 23:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:19Griffin Newman?

  And it can kind of explode your brain in terms of understanding the possibilities of film language.

• 23:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, that you can do something that's very cohesive and just feels like of a very specific vision for not that much.

• 23:30Griffin Newman?

  And fully realized right out of the gate.

• 23:32David Sims?

  So I, like the little pretentious boy that I was, was like, she was on my radar. I guess I'm also, I'm reading the magazines. I'm reading Sight and Sound. I'm plugged in.

• 23:41Griffin Newman?

  We're all reading the mags. We all love reading mags.

• 23:42David Sims?

  And so I, and, and I was, uh, yeah, Samantha Morton, right? Like she was a name a little bit. So yeah, I was hyped to see this. I saw this in theaters when I was 16 years old. I'm proud to admit, I think it went a smidge over my head when I was 16 years old. I thought it was cool, but I think I was kind of like, whoa, like, you know, I don't, I don't. I don't know if I was fully ready for Morvern Callar at that age, but the vibe was cool. I was less of a club kid. I don't know if this is shocking to you guys. Wasn't really like the type to like-

• 24:13Speaker 02

  You never took a knee?

• 24:14David Sims?

  Yeah, go rave in a pizza. Like, I don't know, does this-

• 24:18Griffin Newman?

  What about that infamous dorm room picture of you biting your lower lip and pumping your fists?

• 24:24David Sims?

  There's like four billion of those.

• 24:26Griffin Newman?

  Like a sleeping bag or something?

• 24:27David Sims?

  That is a classic.

• 24:28Speaker 03

  Never had a drum and bass era, dude?

• 24:31David Sims?

  I shouldn't laugh because honestly-

• 24:33Speaker 02

  You never went to Glasto?

• 24:34David Sims?

  Now, I did go to Glastonbury.

• 24:36Speaker 02

  Cool.

• 24:36David Sims?

  I did go to Glastonbury, 2003.

• 24:38Griffin Newman?

  Well, who was playing?

• 24:39David Sims?

  Radiohead. Radiohead, yeah, Morvern Callar. No, I went because it was Radiohead.

• 24:43Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 24:43David Sims?

  That was the sort of way that got me over the line because I was always like, I don't think I'll enjoy that. It was fucking Radiohead doing Hail to the Thief.

• 24:52David Sims?

  You know, like that was the album they were promoting and it was pretty cool.

• 24:55Griffin Newman?

  I don't think there is a single musical act that could get me to go to a festival.

• 24:59David Sims?

  These days? No, no, no. I was a little more pliable back then.

• 25:02Speaker 02

  I'm not a damp festival gal, like not, not a wet fest.

• 25:06David Sims?

  If your fest is in the UK, damp fest is likely.

• 25:10Griffin Newman?

  I would say I'm neither a damp festival gal nor a dry festival gal.

• 25:14David Sims?

  You don't want to dry out neither.

• 25:15Griffin Newman?

  If it's an indoor festival and I'm the only person there and I can watch it from a bed.

• 25:21David Sims?

  On a couch or bed, yes.

• 25:23Speaker 03

  Wet or dry, baby.

• 25:26David Sims?

  I don't think I had seen Morvern Callar again until I went to BAM to see it with you, Emily.

• 25:30Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 25:31David Sims?

  The screening that you guys are talking about.

• 25:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:33David Sims?

  And I remember being like, yeah, fuck this, this fucking rocks, man.

• 25:46Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 25:46David Sims?

  Yes?

• 25:50David Sims?

  Is that the Cineus cow?

• 25:52Griffin Newman?

  The Cineus cow is back.

• 25:53David Sims?

  Haven't heard from her in a while.

• 25:54Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, she's reactivated because she's horny for chicken fingers.

• 25:59David Sims?

  Okay.

• 25:59Griffin Newman?

  And she's excited for the streaming debut of Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.

• 26:04David Sims?

  Wow.

• 26:05Griffin Newman?

  The cow likes chicken.

• 26:07David Sims?

  Remember cow and chicken? Let's look it up while you tell the great listeners about the great stuff on movie.

• 26:13Griffin Newman?

  Well, MUBI is a global film company, bringing great cinema to the world and to you. Curating and elevating visionary filmmaking, all handpicked, always. That's what MUBI does. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, one of my favorite movies of the year.

• 26:27David Sims?

  Absolutely.

• 26:28Griffin Newman?

  You can feel the rush now at home. There's a hole at the bottom of the lake where the movies come from.

• 26:34David Sims?

  That is a line in the movie.

• 26:35Griffin Newman?

  In the new movie from Jane Schomburg, Past and Future Guest.

• 26:37David Sims?

  Past and Future Guest, a great filmmaker, a great podcast guest, a great friend.

• 26:42Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 26:43David Sims?

  Um, this movie rocks. It's got, of course, it stars Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson.

• 26:48Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 26:49David Sims?

  You know, legends, and I tip my cap, but Zach Cherry.

• 26:51Griffin Newman?

  Performances, friend of the show.

• 26:52David Sims?

  Friend of the show, Zach Cherry.

• 26:54Griffin Newman?

  Zach Cherry.

• 26:55David Sims?

  Also in it.

• 26:56Griffin Newman?

  This is true.

• 26:57David Sims?

  Such a cool movie. It won the Queer Pomp and Can. If you haven't heard about this movie, I don't know what's going on with you, but like it obviously has, it was out in theaters uh this summer and now it's on MUBI.

• 27:07Griffin Newman?

  Hannah Einbinder plays the filmmaker attempting to reboot the Camp Miasma franchise, trying to track down the original final girl from the first movie to, to make some sort of legacy sequel, who's played by Gillian Anderson, who lives at the summer camp.

• 27:21David Sims?

  Yes, and you know, and then they hang out and it's regular.

• 27:26Griffin Newman?

  What happens?

• 27:28Griffin Newman?

  It's, it's one of those Hollywood's out of ideas. No, it's very much a movie about Hollywood being out of ideas while being uh an example of there still being new stories to tell.

• 27:38David Sims?

  It's now streaming exclusively on MUBI and you can try MUBI free for 30 days at MUBI.com slash blank check. That's M U B I dot com slash blank check for a whole month of great cinema for free.

• 27:50Griffin Newman?

  They got so many great movies on there to watch, but worth it for 30 days for Miasma.

• 27:55David Sims?

  Damn right.

• 28:01Griffin Newman?

  David.

• 28:01David Sims?

  Hmm.

• 28:02Griffin Newman?

  It's not cuffing season for me, it's cozy season for me. And this year, that meant finally upgrading my new mattress from Lisa.

• 28:10David Sims?

  Lisa!

• 28:11Griffin Newman?

  It's supportive, comfortable, and just what my body needs after a long day. It makes crawling into bed on a chilly fall night feel like luxury.

• 28:18David Sims?

  Yeah, I have a Lisa too. Uh, they've got a lineup of beautifully crafted mattresses tailored to how you sleep.

• 28:24Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:25David Sims?

  Each mattress is designed with specific sleep positions and feel preferences in mind. They've got eco-friendly materials.

• 28:31Griffin Newman?

  Maybe you hear eco-friendly and you go, oh, but I'm gonna sacrifice comfort.

• 28:35David Sims?

  No.

• 28:35Griffin Newman?

  Nope.

• 28:36David Sims?

  They've been awarded best hybrid and best memory foam mattresses by New York Times' Wirecutter. They're featured by West Elm as their go-to mattress partner. And they work with local nonprofits across the US to donate thousands of mattresses each year to families in need. Over 43,000 mattresses donated to date. Go to lisa.com for up to 30% off mattresses. Plus, get an extra $50 off with promo code BLANKCHECK. Exclusive for our listeners. That's L-E-E-S-A.com promo code BLANKCHECK for up to 30% off mattresses plus an extra $50 off. Let them know we sent you and the survey after checkout. Lisa.com promo code BLANKCHECK.

• 29:23Griffin Newman?

  David!

• 29:24David Sims?

  Yes?

• 29:24Griffin Newman?

  Shop.com is giving away $1 million in Shop Cash.

• 29:29David Sims?

  Wow. Shop has all the stores you love and lets you track every order in one spot.

• 29:34Griffin Newman?

  I love that, it's very convenient.

• 29:35David Sims?

  And now, 1,000 shoppers are each gonna win $1,000 in Shop Cash just in time for the holidays.

• 29:43Griffin Newman?

  You get gifts for everyone on your list, or get yourself something a little merry and bright. Find exactly what you're looking for at shop.com.

• 29:51David Sims?

  Uh, got stocking stuffers, maybe the sickest luxury items. Cookware to kicks, toys to high tech, even tinsel and tree toppers. Type in what you're looking for to instantly search every shop at once. Okay, that's shop.com. You can just go click around, find brands you love, search across all the stores, track every order in one spot.

• 30:15Griffin Newman?

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• 30:47David Sims?

  I was so in on Samantha Morton.

• 30:50Griffin Newman?

  I was gonna say you being such an Oscar boards guy. There was this period in the 2000s where she had that energy of like, is this a generational actor? Is this person about to have like a generational decades long defining run?

• 31:05David Sims?

  To be getting this kind of attention on a big scale at a young age, uh, in like small movies, like that's, that's unusual.

• 31:15Griffin Newman?

  The sweet lowdown nomination was seen as like a major surprise.

• 31:18David Sims?

  Right.

• 31:18Griffin Newman?

  And so was the in America nom.

• 31:20David Sims?

  She was in American was surprising.

• 31:22Griffin Newman?

  For either of those. Yeah.

• 31:23Speaker 02

  It's interesting now, but you know, we, so you know, Griffin, I just saw, uh, um, Die My Love the other day. And it's interesting thinking about.

• 31:33Griffin Newman?

  Lynn Ramsey.

• 31:34Speaker 02

  Oh, Lynn Ramsey. And it's interesting to think about, um, Jennifer Lawrence sort of in the same frame as far as somebody who like broke out really, really early. But it's like this, this feels almost like a kind of return to, okay, this is the stuff that I should have done before I, you know, got roped into three different franchises and shit. And now that's like, like Samantha Morton was popping before that was the inevitable path for Samantha Morton. But Jennifer Lawrence, you know, had to come back to it and like. Get her own production shingle company and like, and like opt really like, you know, opt into this kind of filmmaking again and acting.

• 32:09Griffin Newman?

  I, I think Samantha Morton is just like too innately odd and even more than odd. She is like so emotionally like bracing and vulnerable. Where there's something a little bit uncomfortable about watching her, where you feel like you shouldn't be watching this. Like, like there's something voyeuristic about the experience of watching one of her performances. That I think was always going to prevent her from becoming like a conventional studio movie star.

• 32:36David Sims?

  No, yeah, she was never gonna work that way.

• 32:39Griffin Newman?

  That most of her big budget projects are her playing like aliens and sci fi projects.

• 32:43Speaker 02

  Got a sticker in a tank.

• 32:45Griffin Newman?

  Right, right.

• 32:46David Sims?

  She's so fucking good in that movie.

• 32:47Griffin Newman?

  She's incredible in Minority Report, but also like John Carter and shit like she's used in studios in like other worldly ways. And like when she's playing a human character.

• 32:57David Sims?

  And she plays a lot of villains like.

• 32:59Griffin Newman?

  Right, yes, there's that as well. I mean, she, she did like fucking three seasons of The Walking Dead.

• 33:04David Sims?

  She did, she popped up on Walking Dead. I assume it was sort of like one of those storylines where the humans kind of are worse than the zombies. If you think about it, from a certain point of view.

• 33:12Griffin Newman?

  Yes, I believe that.

• 33:13David Sims?

  It was like, what goes on in your town? And they were like, nothing weird happens in our town. Hide the machetes.

• 33:19Griffin Newman?

  Charismatic cult leader brings them in, they feel safe.

• 33:22David Sims?

  Welcome to Evilville. I mean, Foodville, do you want some food?

• 33:28Griffin Newman?

  The food definitely isn't other people. I truly was like.

• 33:32David Sims?

  I think there are two separate sets of cannibals on The Walking Dead.

• 33:35Griffin Newman?

  I think she was the leader of one of them.

• 33:37David Sims?

  There's like, there was like, I used to have to recap that show.

• 33:40Speaker 02

  I'm so checked out of the shit.

• 33:42Griffin Newman?

  Branching out into the spinoff, she was like the late season supervillain who kind of replaced the Negan.

• 33:48David Sims?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 33:49Speaker 02

  Right. I feel like every Walking Dead season now is like three different colons and it's like.

• 33:55David Sims?

  How many seasons of Walking Dead do you think there were?

• 33:57Griffin Newman?

  Cause it's over now. Mothership's over.

• 33:59Speaker 02

  But of the official one?

• 34:00David Sims?

  Of the official, The Walking Dead.

• 34:02Speaker 02

  I think that there were like, what, 12?

• 34:04David Sims?

  11.

• 34:04Speaker 02

  11.

• 34:05David Sims?

  11 seasons. So the last one had 24 episodes. So that's pretty long.

• 34:09Speaker 02

  My, my favorite Walking Dead. Series that makes me laugh every time I see it is, what is it? It's like Walking Dead, like Daryl, the book of Carol.

• 34:19David Sims?

  They did a book of Daryl and a book of Carol.

• 34:21Speaker 02

  The book of Daryl and Carol.

• 34:23Griffin Newman?

  I think they announced that they were gonna do a spinoff show that was Daryl and Carol. And then Carol dropped out and they were like, never mind. It's Walking Dead.

• 34:30David Sims?

  It's all Daryl, baby.

• 34:31Griffin Newman?

  And then season two, they were like, surprise, Carol's back.

• 34:34Speaker 02

  Can you imagine?

• 34:35Griffin Newman?

  It was called Walking Dead, Daryl and Carol. Is that right?

• 34:38Speaker 02

  Can you imagine like not having watched any Walking Dead, but then be like, hey, I heard they're doing a season about Daryl and Carol. Maybe this is my moment. This is when I'm gonna get into this thing.

• 34:48Griffin Newman?

  Like, are there five of them now?

• 34:50David Sims?

  I'm gonna now, now that we'll just have to wrap this little tangent up quickly. Can you tell me how many seasons there were of Fear the Walking Dead, the original?

• 34:58Griffin Newman?

  Six, eight. Which is Coleman Domingo.

• 35:01David Sims?

  He was there at some point. Lenny James.

• 35:04Griffin Newman?

  Uh, Cliff Curtis. Yeah, sorry.

• 35:06Speaker 02

  That's, correct me if I'm wrong, that's the one where they started to be afraid of the zombies?

• 35:10Griffin Newman?

  That's like the start of the.

• 35:12David Sims?

  Sort of. It didn't really have a very definitive, like, take on like how it was different apart from, yes, it was sort of a prequel. Kind of. It was really just like another series in the world. Then there was The Walking Dead: World Beyond.

• 35:29Griffin Newman?

  That's the kids, like the first generation.

• 35:31Speaker 02

  I've never even heard of that.

• 35:32David Sims?

  YA Walking Dead, correct? That was like Stranger Things: Walking Dead. Then there was.

• 35:36Speaker 02

  Could be making this up right now. I have no idea.

• 35:38David Sims?

  Tales of the Walking Dead.

• 35:40Griffin Newman?

  So that's like Walking Dead anthology?

• 35:42David Sims?

  Correct.

• 35:43Griffin Newman?

  Okay, each episode's a standalone.

• 35:44David Sims?

  Then there was Walking Dead: Dead City.

• 35:46Griffin Newman?

  Of course.

• 35:48David Sims?

  That was Maggie.

• 35:50Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 35:50David Sims?

  Who is of course Lauren Cohen's character and Negan, Jeffrey Dean Morgan's character.

• 35:54Griffin Newman?

  Definitely needed a full series.

• 35:56Speaker 03

  Actually, I met a listener.

• 35:57David Sims?

  That had two seasons.

• 35:58Speaker 03

  Who worked at a dispensary. He was a stunt man on that series.

• 36:03Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 36:03Speaker 03

  So shout out. I can't remember his name, but good guy.

• 36:05David Sims?

  Then you have the ongoing, the Walking.

• 36:07Speaker 03

  Free joint.

• 36:10David Sims?

  The Walking Dead, colon, Daryl Dixon.

• 36:12Speaker 02

  We gotta check out this show.

• 36:13David Sims?

  Which indeed was then rebranded The Walking Dead, Daryl Dixon, The Book of Carol.

• 36:18Speaker 02

  Daryl Dixon, The Book of Carol.

• 36:20David Sims?

  And then don't forget that there's also The Walking Dead, The Ones Who Live, in which it turns out that Andrew Lincoln, as Rick Grimes, the main character, is not dead and lives. And he's hanging out with, uh, DeNA Guerra, as can be shown. The only, and then you're like, who else is in? They're like, I don't know, Robert De Niro. You're like, it's like, everyone, they all had like, uh, yeah.

• 36:40Griffin Newman?

  That was the thing where, right, when they killed him off, he was like, he doesn't want the workload of a full series.

• 36:45David Sims?

  He's sick of fucking being in like Georgia for eight months, you know, like sweating in a beard.

• 36:50Griffin Newman?

  This is the start of Rick Grimes movies. That was the announcement was, he's not gonna have a spinoff. He's gonna make a series of Rick Grimes standalone films. And then they were like, never mind, he's back, he's in a new series.

• 37:02David Sims?

  He's fucking back. They, we, we called and nobody wants to do that, so.

• 37:04Griffin Newman?

  And he's got a new supporting cast and that's a lot of people from the old.

• 37:07David Sims?

  It's the same fucking bullshit.

• 37:08Griffin Newman?

  It's the same fucking shit.

• 37:09David Sims?

  It's just, I mean, whatever, like, it's, it's, it is just funny after doing nine seasons with like, I think I'm ready to stretch my movie legs. And it's like, the iron is cold. You cannot strike.

• 37:19Griffin Newman?

  Also, movies are dead.

• 37:21David Sims?

  Well, sure, but I mean.

• 37:22Speaker 02

  Partially because of.

• 37:23David Sims?

  I'm like, this was hot, you know, it was once hot. You could cook an egg on this iron.

• 37:28Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 37:28David Sims?

  You know, like six years ago.

• 37:31Griffin Newman?

  There's that similar, the moment that Christopher Maloney chooses to leave SVU and go like, I really wanna make a play in movies was very bizarre timing.

• 37:39David Sims?

  Yeah, he, he's back, right?

• 37:41Griffin Newman?

  Oh, he's back big time.

• 37:42David Sims?

  Okay, good.

• 37:42Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 37:43David Sims?

  Now, and he's, he's still like hits people's heads against walls and said like, you sick fuck or whatever. Okay, good.

• 37:49Griffin Newman?

  You disgust me.

• 37:52Griffin Newman?

  I'm glad they haven't lost their capacity to be shocked, to care, you know? A job like that can really.

• 37:58David Sims?

  Oh, that's, yeah, it'd be funny if like season 28, they're like, what, yeah, okay, let's go get him, I guess, who cares? What do you do? He fiddled with the, okay, yeah.

• 38:08David Sims?

  It's against the law.

• 38:09Griffin Newman?

  He starts making like Megyn Kelly apologies.

• 38:11Speaker 02

  Oh, my god.

• 38:13David Sims?

  I shouldn't laugh. What a sick sad world.

• 38:16Speaker 02

  First time they say a phoebophile on SVU, we know we're cooked as a culture.

• 38:22Griffin Newman?

  Christopher Maloney walks out of an interrogation room and say, ah, we don't need to worry about this guy, he's just an afebophile. It's not that bad.

• 38:30Griffin Newman?

  Just a great line we've drawn in the sand here. Uh, as you said, a sad, sick world, one that would fit in in a Walking Dead spinoff. Walking Dead, present day America.

• 38:41Speaker 02

  Or Glasgow, Scotland.

• 38:43Griffin Newman?

  Okay, here we go. Back on rails.

• 38:47David Sims?

  Morvern Callow.

• 38:48Griffin Newman?

  Morvern Callow.

• 38:48David Sims?

  So I saw you, Griff, did you see this in theaters? You would have been a youngster.

• 38:52Griffin Newman?

  No, I actually didn't see it until the, the Fun City disc came out.

• 38:56David Sims?

  Again, again, as Emily was saying.

• 38:58Griffin Newman?

  I missed your screening, which I regretted. Yeah.

• 39:00David Sims?

  Oh, you weren't there?

• 39:01Griffin Newman?

  I was not.

• 39:02David Sims?

  We went to the Schwartz's Colored Room afterwards.

• 39:03Speaker 02

  We did, yeah.

• 39:04David Sims?

  Erin was there?

• 39:05Speaker 02

  Erin was there. I mean, I really, when I think back on that, I'm just like, yeah, who? I don't know. I don't. It's so, it's a fog.

• 39:13David Sims?

  It's a fog.

• 39:13Speaker 02

  It's truly, but it was, it was something, it was a fond memory of, uh, of that era.

• 39:20David Sims?

  Well, you know what's good?

• 39:22Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 39:23David Sims?

  Movies.

• 39:23Griffin Newman?

  Movies.

• 39:24David Sims?

  So in a scene.

• 39:25Speaker 02

  Love them. Love them. And this one, what a picture. What a picture.

• 39:29David Sims?

  It's a normal film.

• 39:31Speaker 02

  It's a very normal film about a woman with a normal state of mind, dealing with a normal situation.

• 39:37David Sims?

  In a normal way.

• 39:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:39Griffin Newman?

  Emily, you were saying that you never read the book.

• 39:40Speaker 02

  I haven't, no. Well, I thought, I thought about doing it just for this occasion, but then, I, I mean, there's probably a reason I haven't. Oh, nice. You have it. Okay.

• 39:50David Sims?

  It's written in Scots. Like, I think it's a bit of a tough nut to crack.

• 39:53Griffin Newman?

  I was gonna say.

• 39:54Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 39:54Griffin Newman?

  I've been trying to.

• 39:55Speaker 02

  Oh, incredible.

• 39:56Griffin Newman?

  I'm, I'm like, I was committed to the goal of trying to read all these books before the Lender MC episodes. Cause the annotations are so different.

• 40:04David Sims?

  Right. And, but in every case, apart from Rat Catcher, she's, well, Kevin is pretty long, but the other books are kind of like thin little volumes, like that she's, right, drafting off of.

• 40:13Griffin Newman?

  Oh, this is like 250 pages, but like double spaced and pretty large font. I can get through this. But it is a little similar to, uh.

• 40:21Speaker 02

  Clockwork Orange?

• 40:22Griffin Newman?

  And Trainspotting.

• 40:23Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 40:23Griffin Newman?

  The slang is not as extreme.

• 40:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:26Griffin Newman?

  And you were saying while we were watching the movie, like, I've always wanted to read the book, but I'm worried the book would explain some of the stuff I like goes unexplained in the movie. And the book, I have not made it all the way through, cause it's been a tougher read.

• 40:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:38Griffin Newman?

  Uh, it's like. Very modernist and it's basically a stream of conscious monologue.

• 40:44Speaker 02

  And it sounds like it was accurately adapted.

• 40:46Griffin Newman?

  Correct. And by the way, the book, as I've gotten through it so far, does not really explain shit that much.

• 40:52Speaker 02

  Okay, okay.

• 40:52Griffin Newman?

  It is because it's not like her trying to explain herself to the reader. This is what's so incredible about her, in my opinion, and what's so fascinating that after Rat Catcher, she doesn't do original scripts, that it's all adaptations and she takes these books where you're like, how the fuck do you adapt that? Or why would you even try to adapt that? And she finds a way to make these films that, to me, I feel like she represents the inner life better than anyone else.

• 41:17Speaker 02

  Yes, 100%.

• 41:18Griffin Newman?

  And she takes these films that are about like, just kind of absurd tragedies or like nightmare circumstances. The kind of things that are like so dark that people would rarely have the courage to even try to depict them on screen. And also avoids the kind of clean narrative of it's a story of someone getting through this, overcoming it, working through it, processing it. They're movies that are absolutely about staying in.

• 41:46Speaker 02

  In the state.

• 41:47Griffin Newman?

  The headspace of the unimaginable.

• 41:49Speaker 02

  I mean, it's funny because it's like, yeah, she does almost uniformly depict people going through kind of unimaginable tragedies or difficult times.

• 41:57David Sims?

  Crazy psychological turmoil.

• 41:59Speaker 02

  And, and, and yeah, can like, can translate that novelistic interiority, I think. Like she just has such a way with visuals and like, you know, I think is very specific about the actors that she works with. And like, are you down to go on this journey with me, basically? And that's how you get like a Joaquin and, and you were never really here in Jennifer Lawrence and the new one. But like, I, I think of it almost as like, the way that it doesn't feel completely oppressive to watch her movies, except I would say maybe, and I haven't watched it since it came out, but like, I don't know that I will ever watch. We need to talk about Kevin again. It should be so unpleasant. But aside from that, I think it doesn't, it kind of goes down easier than you would think.

• 42:41Speaker 02

  I think because you are so with the character in it and that feels like counterintuitive.

• 42:46Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 42:46Speaker 02

  But the fact like, you know, when you're thinking about somebody. Friend of yours who's going through a rough time and you just like, oh my God, I can't, I can't even imagine being them in this situation. But when it's you going through the hard time, you do compartmentalization, you find the absurdness in the situation. There's a whole like landscape of textures of what you're, what you're feeling as you're dealing with this tragedy or, you know, whatever you're going through. And I think that she does such a good job. Like it's not uniformly sadness, you know, agony, all of that, that there is humor. There is, you know, poetry and there is, you know, levity sometimes in the midst of absurd tragedy.

• 43:24David Sims?

  Definitely.

• 43:24Griffin Newman?

  I think that's very well said.

• 43:25David Sims?

  Fun.

• 43:26Griffin Newman?

  I think this movie is.

• 43:27Speaker 02

  This movie is super fun. I think it's the, it's probably the fun. We were talking about this the other night. It's like.

• 43:32David Sims?

  I think it's her only fun movie.

• 43:34Griffin Newman?

  The character is committed to trying to have fun in a way the other, her other protagonists are not.

• 43:41David Sims?

  Die, My Love is kind of, is quite funny.

• 43:44Griffin Newman?

  It's funny.

• 43:44David Sims?

  Yeah. And is, and has that sort of like heightened, almost farcical stuff, but I wouldn't, it's not maybe not fun because it's still quite stressful.

• 43:52Griffin Newman?

  They were all intense. I saw people catching wind of art hints that this was coming up and there was a lot of like sicko mode, he, he, he can't wait. Five weeks of the darkest shit ever. And like people who have seen the Ramsey canon being excited at it. Because by and large, and Kevin may be the exception here, although I do, I find that film watchable, even though it's the toughest of the five. Is that these aren't like oppressive punishing movies. They are intense mood movies. They are like deeply felt movies. But even you Ben were like worried and expressing this to us the other night when we were hanging out, going in of like, when should I fucking watch this? And maybe we should watch this all together at the office because I don't know if it's going to bum me out to watch it too much at home.

• 44:37Griffin Newman?

  And that's because you read the synopsis, which like starts with when she discovers her boyfriend has committed suicide.

• 44:43David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 44:44Griffin Newman?

  And you're just like, oh, so this movie's immediately going to put me in a bad headspace. You're someone who gets very emotionally affected by movies and we were trying to explain to you the other night out, like it's not what you think it's gonna be.

• 44:55David Sims?

  Right. It might sound dark and I suppose the subject matter is dark, but it's not punishing.

• 45:03Griffin Newman?

  It's not going to roll off your back. It's not like you're going to go like, oh, it deals with it in a light way. But she, her movies aren't meant to be. They're challenging, but not in that kind of punishing, I want you to suffer way. They're just like very unconventionally structured narrative.

• 45:20Speaker 02

  She also is just a, she is a movie maker. Like she is so like, it's, it's, it's fucking cinema, baby. Like there's so much to look at and be swept up in. It's not sparse. It's, her films are never sparse. They're never, they never feel silent or dry or anything. There's just always a wealth of visual ideas. So, you know, even if it is something tough that you're watching, there's, you're still watching a movie.

• 45:45Griffin Newman?

  They're sensory.

• 45:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:46Griffin Newman?

  They're like very gripping.

• 45:48David Sims?

  It feels so lived in, in life.

• 45:50Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 45:51David Sims?

  I was really struck by just how, I felt anxiety because I really was like so immersed and rooting for the character. And then even at the end, I, it hit me too of like, we did just watch her cut up her husband. And yet.

• 46:08Griffin Newman?

  Boyfriend.

• 46:09David Sims?

  He deserved it.

• 46:09Speaker 02

  Boyfriend.

• 46:10David Sims?

  Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, still.

• 46:11Speaker 02

  She is wearing a ring though, I noticed this time.

• 46:14David Sims?

  I thought, I thought it, it said in the synopsis, husband.

• 46:17Speaker 02

  I, I think it's boyfriend, at least in.

• 46:20David Sims?

  I, I take it it's boyfriend.

• 46:21Speaker 03

  Either way, it, it just, it's, you're rooting for her, even though she, I mean, that's quite an act.

• 46:28David Sims?

  For some reason, I just always get annoyed right at the start. I'm with her unconsciously, it's not like she says anything.

• 46:35Griffin Newman?

  The movie basically starts with like four minutes of total silence.

• 46:38David Sims?

  Sure. But I'm with her in that he doesn't say, could you please send the novel? He just says, send the no, I'm like, you know, can we ask nicely? Like you're, you're putting her in a really tough situation.

• 46:50Speaker 02

  Also, he has.

• 46:50David Sims?

  And then you're like, oh, FYI, send the novel.

• 46:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, he has zero explanation of why I did it. Like it's the most pat, like just don't ask any questions. I was tortured. And the fact that the people at the pub called Dostoevsky, I'm like, was this guy kind of a pain in the ass? Like I, you know, you, you kind of.

• 47:05David Sims?

  Which is, it's a very dark kind of gallows humory way to think about it. But the movie has that gallows humor and I think Ben is right in that like when she's chopping it up, you're almost like, yeah, good. I'm glad she's getting this out of the way. This is, yeah, this is funny. This is, this is a good job by her.

• 47:20Speaker 02

  The smell.

• 47:22David Sims?

  It's just, it's just, hey, man, it's Scotland, too. It's like, you know, it's like, it's a place with the most gallows humor because it's dark. Everyone dies when they're 58 because all you describe Mars all the time. Don't come at me.

• 47:36Speaker 02

  I mean, I think I was also very primed for this movie when I saw it because aside from being in my warp records era, I was also in my like Belle and Sebastian era. Like Scotland was like overrepresented in my pop culture intake at the time. So I was just like, okay, I kind of, there's this, there is that like rise sense of humor that even though this is a very different film than had different tone than a Belle and Sebastian album circa 2000.

• 47:58David Sims?

  Yes, I would say lovely Stuart Murdoch is more on the precious side.

• 48:01Speaker 02

  Yes, but, but very, but a lot of those songs are very, very dark. They just sound cute. Yeah.

• 48:06Griffin Newman?

  But you're right that it's like a bone deep sensibility thing where her finding levity and humor in these movies isn't some strategic like, well, I got to put some jokes in so it isn't too oppressive. It is like, that is her worldview. It comes across in the way she like interrogates all of these characters and figures out like burrows into their mind and their feelings. And she's also like a funny person, like when you read interviews with her and shit, you know? I know you were talking about you had a kind of intense, yeah.

• 48:34Speaker 02

  No, it wasn't intense. I wish it would have been intense. It was just like she had no interest in, in, in even looking at me the one time I got to, you know, do a panel with her after, um, I think it was for You Were Never Really Here. And, you know, I mean, we do a lot of these in our line of work. You get a little desensitized. This was still a big one for me. I was like, this is one of my heroes and like, how am I going to not come off like a total asshole? And ideally, how do I get to have a drink with her after this? And it was like, nope, it was not happening.

• 49:04David Sims?

  Do you think maybe you put her off when you were like, I'm not worthy, I'm not worthy. That might have done it.

• 49:10Speaker 02

  She's like, what is this in reference to? I'm, yeah, it was, I, I, I kind of probably blacked it out. I, it was humiliating whatever happened.

• 49:20Griffin Newman?

  I, I find something, uh, perversely life affirming about her movies. A, because they like make me feel so deeply. And I think a lot of her films. Have central characters who are kind of catatonic, who are going through such extreme things, but don't know how to process them in the moment and almost go numb. But the way she makes her movies makes me feel the range of human experiences, even if it doesn't have some kind of like sense of conquering the challenge at the end. There's like a little bit of like, just like, well, this is about like, being alive is this, it's all of this shit, you know? You hope nothing this extreme ever happens to you.

• 50:01Speaker 02

  I also just like, I was thinking of this after Die of My Love, I'm just like so grateful for her, just always depicting like people who are not, there's no assumed normalcy, like we were saying about anything. And like, I don't know, I just find that so, as somebody who often has to deal with notes for things where it's like, can you make this person a little more, you know, whatever, relatable, or, you know, somebody that we can at least understand at first glance, like, oh, it's that kind of person. There's no like, oh, it's that kind of person with any of her characters. And I just think that, that in itself is life affirming to me because it's like respectful of a, of a range of human experiences and psychology.

• 50:42Griffin Newman?

  We'll, we'll crack open the dossier in a moment because there are a lot of good quotes from her about that, but I want to read this first.

• 50:47David Sims?

  Sure.

• 50:47Griffin Newman?

  Cause I opened with the second half of the note he leaves for her. This is the first half. Sorry, Morvern, don't try to understand it. It just felt like the right thing to do. My novel is on the disc, print it out and send it to the first publisher on this list.

• 51:01David Sims?

  Just the assumption.

• 51:02Griffin Newman?

  If they will not take it, try the next one down. And then only past that point does it move to the emotional.

• 51:09David Sims?

  Right.

• 51:10Griffin Newman?

  I wrote it for you. I love you. Be brave.

• 51:12David Sims?

  Right. Okay. Fine. I mean, and all right, I'm not trying to discount the experience of whoever this person is, but the movie does discount his experience kind of like, that's like baked into what you're watching is that he's completely abstract. And so you can project like the darkest tragedy onto him, or you can project sort of almost a weird comedy onto it.

• 51:34Speaker 02

  He was hot, though, probably. I think he was hot.

• 51:36David Sims?

  I mean, the guy she fucks in Spain is.

• 51:40Speaker 02

  I almost wonder if it's the same. Yeah, she's got taste and she has like the right radar.

• 51:44David Sims?

  She lets the other friend pick off the like bucket hat weirdo loser.

• 51:48Speaker 03

  The straight up wanker.

• 51:50David Sims?

  Yeah, he is a big wanker. Fucking wanker.

• 51:52Griffin Newman?

  You know, the other crazy thing is this novel comes out of the exercise of Alan Warner trying to write a book about the boyfriend. He starts it from that.

• 52:01David Sims?

  Right, right, right. Sure, sure. Right.

• 52:02Griffin Newman?

  And then he goes like, this is feeling like.

• 52:04David Sims?

  It's a little tropey. It's like.

• 52:06Griffin Newman?

  Right. And he was, uh, what, what's the, the quote, the rigidity of the perspective was frustrating him. And so he was like, as an exercise, like, what if I write her? And then it just all started unfolding, which is that, that adage that everyone says of like, the way to write a novel is you write 30 pages and throw them out. And the book starts on page 31, like he almost needed the whole exercise, perhaps of working out the boyfriend as a lead character to then throw out and write the other person.

• 52:36David Sims?

  And that's, that's probably why it's so good that, yeah, but there's.

• 52:40Speaker 02

  Is there any idea in the, in the book of what the book, his book is about? James's book.

• 52:46David Sims?

  Oh, what's his book about? I mean, I just feel like it's some sort of authentic slice of life thing, right?

• 52:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:51David Sims?

  Because like, why else would the publishers be into it?

• 52:54Speaker 02

  What if.

• 52:54David Sims?

  Like, it would be so funny if there were, it's like sci fi. Can you explain the rules of how the spaceship works to us?

• 53:00Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 53:00David Sims?

  Like, what?

• 53:01Speaker 02

  I mean, the funniest thing to me would be like, if it was about, if the book was called Morvern Callar.

• 53:07David Sims?

  Sure. It was like about her.

• 53:08Griffin Newman?

  By Morvern Callar.

• 53:09Speaker 02

  Because he says, I wrote it for you. And I'm like, is this, you know, some sort of ode to my amazing girlfriend?

• 53:15David Sims?

  Right.

• 53:17David Sims?

  She works at a supermarket. She's so mean.

• 53:20Griffin Newman?

  It's a book called My Crazy Girlfriend.

• 53:24Griffin Newman?

  Uh, I, I, where I'm in so far, and I'm under a hundred pages. It hasn't really gotten into it, which does feel like kind of part of it, that the book remains this kind of abstract idea.

• 53:38David Sims?

  For most of her time in the public sphere, Lynn Ramsey had a career marked by trials and tribulations, but in her early years, she had a speedy trajectory upward, I would say, pretty much to Morvern Callar. It's after this that it becomes, she becomes.

• 53:52Speaker 02

  Very bumpy.

• 53:53David Sims?

  Curst, right? With like all these projects that fall apart and all. Anyway. So she goes to England's National Film and Television School, uh, for. Education. Then she writes a short film called Small Deaths. It plays at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival, wins the Jury Prize, the short film Jury Prize. Her second short is Kill the Day. Her third short is Gas Man. She wins another Cannes Jury Prize for that. Off of that, she gets Rat Catcher. That goes to Cannes Uncertain Regard. She wins the BAFTA for Best Debut. So it's like, things are going great. After the release of Rat Catcher, Ramsey gets attached to the first of many unrealized projects, a multi-director anthology project about sex. What? What?

• 54:38David Sims?

  Along with Gas Barn Away and How Hartley.

• 54:41Griffin Newman?

  Never happened. It was an anthology series called Uncensored that was supposed to be Ted Hope and James Sheamus.

• 54:47David Sims?

  Yes.

• 54:48Griffin Newman?

  Friends of the pod, hand-selecting directors. They wanted to explore sex.

• 54:51David Sims?

  Hand-selecting. My goodness. Instead, she decides to make Morvern Callar, an adaptation of Alan Warner's debut 1995 novel. She first learned of the book when she was shooting Rat Catcher. It was recommended to her. She was attracted to the title character because she's subversive.

• 55:10Griffin Newman?

  JJ found that there were two different stories. She told it different times about.

• 55:14David Sims?

  She also at one point said it was when she was making Gas Man. Who knows? But it was, you know, early in her career, she gets handed this book. It reminds her of Kamu's The Stranger, but with a young woman. She's got an edge.

• 55:24Griffin Newman?

  That was the big thing she said, that she felt like she had not read this kind of like super-modernist in the headspace of an unlikable, undefinable, inexplicable character from the perspective of a woman before. In the same way, can I just, I found this in the book.

• 55:40David Sims?

  Go ahead.

• 55:40Griffin Newman?

  First of all, his like, suicide note is much more like flowery and verbose and overwritten versus sparse. It's as annoying and rude, but in the opposite direction. But then it's pointedly like, after a good while, I started paging through the disc. The novel thing was page after page of words, then a number, then more pages of words and another number. You had to read it to get to the end. You couldn't see the point in reading through all of that just to get to the end. Without reading a word of it, I toddled over to the video and put on the thing. Not the original, but the remake with special effects. She pointedly doesn't read the novel. She's just like, what is this shit? Then she finishes watching the thing and she prints it out.

• 56:18Speaker 02

  I, I, okay, I'm gonna read this book.

• 56:21Griffin Newman?

  This is the thing, the book really doesn't like demystify.

• 56:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 56:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 56:26David Sims?

  I think I want to say, Young Adam. Have you ever seen Young Adam? Film came out the year after.

• 56:31Griffin Newman?

  That's a David McKenzie, right?

• 56:32David Sims?

  It is, also Scottish, also existentialist, also horny, much more, not a movie I just like. If you want to see Younger Bakers, big old thing.

• 56:41Griffin Newman?

  You can, his thing is there.

• 56:43Speaker 02

  I think you can see his thing.

• 56:45David Sims?

  But you can see it.

• 56:46Griffin Newman?

  That movie's got a lot of floppy thing.

• 56:47David Sims?

  Yeah, it does.

• 56:48Speaker 02

  Okay, cool.

• 56:49David Sims?

  But like, that is a much more, in my opinion, rote existentialist, a Scottish guy, fucking not, whereas this is so much cooler and so much more interesting.

• 56:58Griffin Newman?

  That is a movie that like, has the characters kind of state the inner monologue.

• 57:03David Sims?

  Little bit. So yeah, she, she's very interested in this character. She likes the feeling of escape. She likes exploring this slightly lost generation, disenfranchised youth going out, traveling, having nothing to do. She calls Morvyn something of a Western cowboy character. Of course, she does have a hat, sometimes, for you to get that, and boots.

• 57:25Griffin Newman?

  But this notion of like, she rides into town, no one knows what's motivating her, she does a thing, she rides off.

• 57:30David Sims?

  Um, and she's got this weird void. The drug taking is like more hedonistic, it's not political, it's not peace and love, right?

• 57:39Griffin Newman?

  Well, she's saying, right, that's the generational thing she wants to comment on, is there's something almost like self punishing about the pursuit of happiness in a, in a society that's collapsing and this, this whole notion of like, a generation who believes that happiness is not accessible to them without money, and there's not a clear path to making money.

• 57:56David Sims?

  She also thinks that it has elements that might potentially interest wider audiences. I've got a young girl of 21, I've got some rave scenes, I've got some sex scenes, lots of selling points. I think I'm becoming less naive about how everything works. I do think it's just funny that Ramses is like, I mean, this is frankly, commercial.

• 58:14Speaker 02

  Popcorn. I mean, I'll say this.

• 58:16David Sims?

  She chops her boyfriend up in the bathtub, and we go from there.

• 58:20Speaker 02

  I mean, it's interesting, like, the tension of the film for me, and what I think, if there's anything that it is about for me, and I'll just like, put this out there, is like, that I feel like, aside from just being a void, which I think is maybe a little overly simplistic about her, I think it is about like, truly. Being marginal as a person like, like she, and, and I think the greatest tension as represented by the situation in the film is like, she doesn't, she's feeling alienation from, you know, the youth culture in her town. Everybody else is an old corpse waiting to die. And there's an absence of sort of a literate, sophisticated adult existence, which you

• 59:03Speaker 02

  kind of assume her boyfriend may be represented, like maybe he was sort of the smartest guy in their group of friends that would all go hit the pub. But it's like, now she's there without him. There's this, but, and there's this idea of like a want for something that is neither the kids taking the E of the house and, and hanging out with grandma. But it's like, also this sort of fundamental disinterest and boredom with like art as like a mannered thing, or like as represented by the publishers at the end. So it's like, where do you fit in then? If you are like a hedonistic, embodied young woman who, you

• 59:44Speaker 02

  know, is on, it finds, finds your peers to be like empty and unsatisfying, but like, you also don't, you're not quite equipped to be like a important young novelist, then where do you fit in, in this world? And I don't know, that to me is like, that always feels like the tension or why she feels like, yeah, lost as a character.

• 1:00:04Griffin Newman?

  She's, she's bored partying and she's bored at her job and she's bored relaxing.

• 1:00:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:09Griffin Newman?

  You know, like everything isn't quite hitting for her.

• 1:00:12David Sims?

  It is a vibe.

• 1:00:13Griffin Newman?

  And you know, you're obviously watching her in like a pretty extreme state of, of grief and shock.

• 1:00:20David Sims?

  Distress, shock, something like that.

• 1:00:21Griffin Newman?

  You also get the sense that like, she wasn't a radically different person a week earlier because her friends are largely like, hey, what's up?

• 1:00:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:28Griffin Newman?

  You know, like her best friend is noticing that something seems a little off in her, but even when she tries to confess it, she, she won't hear it.

• 1:00:36Speaker 02

  This is also the thing about hanging out with people who are constantly on drugs. It's like you can get away with being like that, whether or not your boyfriend's committed suicide or not. And people will just be like, ah, you seem a little down today.

• 1:00:45Griffin Newman?

  It's part of the same quote that David was pulling from the dossier where she's talking about the lost generation, everything, but she was sort of like saying that she, two movies in and having made a couple of short films, she was already like, I guess this is the dominant theme of my work is like outsiders. And when she talks about making movies about outsiders, it's not like outsiders, I feel like how they are often defined, but she's truly making movies of people who do not know how to function.

• 1:01:11David Sims?

  Like Ponyboy.

• 1:01:13Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:01:13David Sims?

  Yeah. Soda Pop. Soda Pop.

• 1:01:15Griffin Newman?

  We usually are telling outsiders to stay golden.

• 1:01:17David Sims?

  No, that movie rocked.

• 1:01:18Griffin Newman?

  Well, but it's not just like subcultures or whatever.

• 1:01:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:22Griffin Newman?

  It's like people who don't know what to do or how to fit in.

• 1:01:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I think, I mean, she is an outsider only internally because she's still, you know, among people, like from the outside, she is friends, she's going on holiday in Spain, she's with her peers there.

• 1:01:37David Sims?

  But she feels like she's.

• 1:01:37Speaker 02

  She's not with them though.

• 1:01:38David Sims?

  Right. And it feels like she's wearing like a fake skin or something.

• 1:01:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:42Griffin Newman?

  But every one of her lead characters.

• 1:01:44David Sims?

  Samantha Morgan's still good at playing that.

• 1:01:45Griffin Newman?

  Has some degree of that at their core.

• 1:01:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:48Griffin Newman?

  I think.

• 1:01:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:48David Sims?

  I think Joaquin Phoenix's character in that one is very well adjusted.

• 1:01:52Griffin Newman?

  Hand in glow.

• 1:01:53David Sims?

  Exactly. That guy is the kind of guy that if I saw him on a New York City street, I would shake his hand and say, how are you doing, sir?

• 1:02:00Griffin Newman?

  Who amongst us doesn't suffocate themselves with a garbage bag?

• 1:02:03David Sims?

  Just wake up at the morning.

• 1:02:07David Sims?

  Lynn Ramsey, here's a quote from her. I guess I'm just the dark girl who's kinda weird. I like bugs.

• 1:02:13Griffin Newman?

  Good, good, good.

• 1:02:14Speaker 02

  I like the ass.

• 1:02:14David Sims?

  For me, it's coincidental. Both feature films of mine so far do start off with a death, rat catcher as well, but they're both very different. One's an accidental death where the kid feels guilty and he doesn't tell anyone. There's some similarity to that, but I think the death in Morvern is more about identity. She takes on someone else's identity, which gives her a chance to get out of her life. They, you know, like the theme of escape obviously is kind of happening in both, but in Morvern, I feel like there is a, there's sort of like a appealing fantasy to what she's doing in a way of like, what if you did just fucking hack everyone up, you know, who's a mill around your neck and bury him in the woods?

• 1:02:55Griffin Newman?

  Let's also be clear, right? The movie opens, she's lying on the floor, lit by Christmas decorations.

• 1:03:01David Sims?

  Going on and off.

• 1:03:02Griffin Newman?

  Sort of entwined in a body.

• 1:03:03Speaker 02

  It's a Christmas movie.

• 1:03:04Griffin Newman?

  It is. I had to double check that Shane Black didn't write this.

• 1:03:10Speaker 02

  I have to say, whatever mode they have the Christmas lights on is psychotic.

• 1:03:13Speaker 03

  I would, yeah.

• 1:03:14Speaker 02

  And sociopathic.

• 1:03:15Speaker 03

  The sort of like

• 1:03:16Speaker 02

  All on, all off.

• 1:03:16Speaker 03

  Bodega mode or whatever, like where it's just like

• 1:03:21Speaker 02

  Do the chasing lights one.

• 1:03:23Speaker 03

  Or some twinkling.

• 1:03:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:26Griffin Newman?

  But yes, they're sort of like physically entangled on the floor. At first, it almost feels like it's a post-coital thing. And then you see the blood and then you get the sense that he has killed himself. And she is there just in this kind of like blank catatonic state.

• 1:03:44Speaker 03

  It's so gruesome too, because he's moved from where he, you know, cut himself. I don't know, there's something about that too, that again, feels really real. And that it's not just like, he's like laying there in the chair in the kitchen or the bathtub.

• 1:04:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:04Speaker 02

  Something, yeah, I mean, yeah, my boyfriend, like when he was, I was talking about doing this movie and I showed it to him and he misremembered it as that she killed him.

• 1:04:16Griffin Newman?

  This is why I wanted to clarify, when we keep talking about him chopping him up.

• 1:04:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:21Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:04:21Speaker 02

  His dead body like a week later. Yeah, but it is, I think, you know, it's one of those things because it's such a, yeah, it's kind of murky how it's told. You could easily make that mistake.

• 1:04:34Griffin Newman?

  The letter is what makes it clear that it was a thing he did of his own volition. But yeah, she like is there, you're sort of, we're so used to the cinematic language of someone in this kind of situation, having like a fucking Julianne Moore breakdown scene, right? Even if the idea is that she discovered this body whenever ago, you're not used to seeing like a dramatic powerhouse actress next to a dead body, kind of being expressionless, that there is just like a catatonic state of shock and grief. And then we see her just like, get ready and go out and meet up with her friends at the party that she was supposed to go to with him. And just say like, he's not here and everyone's like, oh God, what's the excuse this time?

• 1:05:15Griffin Newman?

  And there's this feeling of like procrastination of like, oh fuck, what am I going to do with this dead body? Both in like, what do I literally do with it? And also what do I do with my emotions and processing this? That she keeps going like, let me just try to like get out and have like a normal day. And maybe when I come back home, I'll be in a better mood to process this.

• 1:05:34Speaker 02

  I'll be in the right headspace to chop up the body, finally.

• 1:05:37Speaker 03

  I mean, it's extreme, but when you're suffering from depression. I was going to say. Exactly, yeah. It's like you just. She has shut down. You, you're incapable of dealing with.

• 1:05:45Griffin Newman?

  It is circumstantially extreme, but this is exactly how I handle laundry when I am this depressed. Where I'm just like, I'll just fucking do it tomorrow, you know? I'll unpack the clothes tomorrow, like.

• 1:05:59Speaker 02

  I think it's something about, what is it? It's a, it's executive function is what people would say.

• 1:06:03Griffin Newman?

  Goes out the window.

• 1:06:03Speaker 02

  It goes out the window.

• 1:06:05Griffin Newman?

  Right, and I also think, like, as someone who suffers from, like, pretty extreme depression and anxiety, if I am, like, dealing with something that is actually intense, sometimes I'll be like, I just need to, like, time shift the emotions of this. I can't handle this right now. I need to just, like, get through stuff. And then at some point, it will catch up with me later.

• 1:06:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think, I think, I don't know, there's something to the idea of this being a movie about escape, where it's like, for somebody who is probably just depressed all the time anyway, this horrific thing happens, this gruesome thing that is definitely like a break in whatever the monotony was that you were feeling, you know, totally oppressed by. And in a way, like, the worst thing possible then becomes an escape valve, because it represents at least a marking point in, like, what's otherwise, you know, a bunch of, you know, just like a depressive soup. And like, it feels like the realization she comes to eventually, when she does eventually deal with the body and figure out what to do next,

• 1:07:08Speaker 02

  is like, using the tragedy as a rung to get out of it, because it's something. It's, it's something that happened to her.

• 1:07:17Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:07:17Speaker 02

  And, yeah.

• 1:07:17Griffin Newman?

  And beyond that, I also think that you can infer from the note on the computer that their relationship has probably been one of mutual codependent depression.

• 1:07:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:30Griffin Newman?

  That has probably been their bonding element, that they have been like.

• 1:07:32Speaker 03

  That's a good read.

• 1:07:33Griffin Newman?

  In this together.

• 1:07:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:35Griffin Newman?

  Which is like both comforting and also self-perpetuating.

• 1:07:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:39Griffin Newman?

  Uh, versus like, no one understands me, not even my boyfriend. It's like, there's probably a. Like

• 1:07:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:45Griffin Newman?

  Best and worst of times to whatever dynamic they have built with each other and then mutually like going out and escaping by dropping E with friends.

• 1:07:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:54Griffin Newman?

  Or whatever it is.

• 1:07:55Speaker 02

  It's funny because this is such a druggy movie, but it's like, no, but it feels like it's giving junky couple so much that like, and it would be there for that as well, but it feel, it has that vibe entirely.

• 1:08:06Griffin Newman?

  But part of like the junky vibe is like probably like depression as a drug, like them giving into that, you know?

• 1:08:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:12Griffin Newman?

  Like comfortably willingly kind of staying in that state.

• 1:08:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. Cause it's like, it's like, I actually think, cause I wrote in my notes, I was like, I always wonder what their relationship was like. And the thing is like, I don't think it was a bad relationship. I, but I think it like, I, I, I mean, I don't think it was like fractious. It wasn't like they were fighting a lot or there was, except, you know, if she finds out there was cheating involved, but like I, it, it seems more like that where it's just, you kind of sink to the bottom with somebody.

• 1:08:40Griffin Newman?

  Insidious kind of codependency.

• 1:08:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:42Griffin Newman?

  And, and you know, in the book, his note is so much more kind of self aggrandizing. It is almost like this self stylized, like, you know, the depressed Russian writers, you know, it's almost like a, a piece of legacy for him.

• 1:08:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:58Griffin Newman?

  Almost like, won't this help the text? Right? That like this book came out of this.

• 1:09:03Speaker 02

  So annoyed by it.

• 1:09:05Griffin Newman?

  Which is why I think it's like so much better to have it be annoying in that he's just kind of so blunt and unemotional about it. Because also then in the instructions he's giving to her, it's not like he's saying, I want the proceeds from the book to go to charity, or can you buy my parents a house? Right? Or like tell people my story or whatever it is. It's just like, he's left her with this mess. He's literally left her with a bloody body in the house, all of the emotional work she has to do. And also like, can you just like get this sold?

• 1:09:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:35Griffin Newman?

  And it's like, to what end?

• 1:09:36David Sims?

  It's so extremely selfish.

• 1:09:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:38Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:09:39Speaker 02

  It's insane.

• 1:09:39Griffin Newman?

  Which is why you, whether or not she's justified in doing what she does, there's almost a like sort of why not do it?

• 1:09:46Speaker 02

  Nothing wrong.

• 1:09:47Griffin Newman?

  Right. Because it's like, she's not betraying any notion of.

• 1:09:50David Sims?

  I think we can all agree. Yeah.

• 1:09:52Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:09:52David Sims?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:09:53Griffin Newman?

  Like what is gained by her?

• 1:09:55David Sims?

  But.

• 1:09:55Griffin Newman?

  Leaving his name on the book.

• 1:09:57David Sims?

  I'm her friend.

• 1:09:58Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:59David Sims?

  And I find out she's doing all this, I might be like.

• 1:10:02Speaker 02

  We doing alright, Morvern?

• 1:10:04Griffin Newman?

  That's the role of a friend.

• 1:10:05Speaker 02

  Unless. Hey, Morvern, I heard you chopped up the old boyfriend. I know he was dead already. Unless you'd been sleeping with him. Yeah. In which case, you don't really have a leg to stand on.

• 1:10:25Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 1:10:26David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:26Griffin Newman?

  This episode is brought to you by XYZ Films and the acclaimed new documentary Capturing Bigfoot.

• 1:10:32David Sims?

  Hmm.

• 1:10:32Griffin Newman?

  On October 20th, 1967, Roger Patterson captured 59 seconds of film showing a creature walking through the Northern California woods. I wonder if you can log that on Letterboxd?

• 1:10:43David Sims?

  It is an iconic video.

• 1:10:45Griffin Newman?

  Footage that became the most analyzed and debated in history. 59 years later, a reel of 16 millimeter film discovered in a safe changes everything. Capturing Bigfoot reveals the untold story behind the world's greatest mystery told for the first time by Patterson's own son and the people who were there. This is a story about family legacy, broken friendships, and how far people will go to protect a secret.

• 1:11:07David Sims?

  Of course, you got the classic, what they call Patterson Gimlin film everyone knows, of Bigfoot out in the woods, like the famous Bigfoot picture. This has other stuff shot by him that no one's ever seen. That's what makes this movie different.

• 1:11:19Griffin Newman?

  But we're also talking brand new 4K scans of the original film taken from the Patterson family archives that some historians have called the best rendering of the footage ever seen.

• 1:11:28David Sims?

  I feel like we've all seen that footage as like grainy.

• 1:11:31Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:11:31David Sims?

  You know, that you see, you know, whatever, you see it in a documentary for two seconds. But this is restoring it and making it look much more clear.

• 1:11:38Griffin Newman?

  There's also a companion podcast, the Capturing Bigfoot Podcast, which goes deeper into the legend and lore of Bigfoot and the Patterson Gimlin film, featuring weekly episodes with experts in cryptozoology, urban legends, and filmmaking.

• 1:11:52David Sims?

  I'm something of an expert in cryptozoology.

• 1:11:54Griffin Newman?

  Well, of course, yes, but that's more of a hobby.

• 1:11:57David Sims?

  Yeah, this podcast, Capturing Bigfoot Podcast, is hosted by the director of the film, Mark Evans, and it's available for free on YouTube and Spotify with exclusive episodes and content available on Patreon to members of the Capturing Bigfoot Society.

• 1:12:12Griffin Newman?

  Uh, Capturing Bigfoot is now available to rent or own on Amazon Prime Video. Learn more about Capturing Bigfoot at capturingbigfoot.com.

• 1:12:29Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 1:12:30David Sims?

  Yes?

• 1:12:30Griffin Newman?

  Nobody likes bank fees. Why would you like them?

• 1:12:34David Sims?

  When I was younger, I really would have benefited from a bank that did not charge me fees anytime I did anything, basically, which is, I feel like, what I was always dealing with.

• 1:12:44Griffin Newman?

  Chime. That's where Chime comes in. Chime.

• 1:12:48David Sims?

  They're changing the way people bank. They're not like traditional banks who charge fees and get keep perks and rewards. They offer the most rewarding fee-free banking, all with no overdraft fees, no monthly fees, and no minimum balance fees, okay?

• 1:13:01Griffin Newman?

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• 1:13:03David Sims?

  You're gonna get 5% cash back on a Chime card in a category of your choice, like gas or groceries.

• 1:13:08Griffin Newman?

  My two favorite things.

• 1:13:09David Sims?

  All while building credit through regular, everyday spending with no credit check, and you can grow your money faster with a savings rate that's nine times the national average. And if you're ever in a pinch, SpotMe lets you overdraft up to $200 fee-free.

• 1:13:23Griffin Newman?

  Fee-free?

• 1:13:24David Sims?

  So, join the millions who are already banking fee-free with America's number-one choice for banking. Head to chime.com/blankcheck. That is chime.com/blankcheck. Sign up now. It only takes a few minutes.

• 1:13:39Speaker 04

  Chime is a fintech, not a bank. Banking services and Chime card provided by Chime's bank partners. Qualifying direct deposits required. Terms and limits apply. Go to chime.com/disclosures for details.

• 1:13:59Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 1:14:00David Sims?

  Yes?

• 1:14:01Griffin Newman?

  He lurks in shadow. He slips into dreams. He casts no reflection. Audible presents Bram Stoker's Dracula, a new full cast audio thriller starring Ella Purnell as Mina Harker, Jonathan Bailey as Dracula, and an A-list cast, including Maggie Gyllenhaal as Van Helsing, Amy Lou Wood as Lucy, David Johnson as Dr. Seward, and many more that is an all-star cast.

• 1:14:21David Sims?

  Yeah, this new full cast thriller locks Mina Harker in a battle of minds with the Count. When Mina's fiance, Jonathan Harker, Louis Partridge, vanishes in Transylvania, Mina pieces together letters, diary entries, and chilling Testimony to hunt the predator stalking those she loves, only to discover Dracula is already hunting her.

• 1:14:41Griffin Newman?

  Joined by the enigmatic Van Helsing, Mina and a small fearless band race against time to stop this ancient terror. Using her intellect, her resolve, and a gift for drawing the unseen lines between clues. Mina may just hold the key to bring down the Count if he hasn't already found his way inside her mind.

• 1:14:57David Sims?

  Featuring a haunting original score by Elon Ashkery and a spatial dolby Atmos sound design. Audible's Dracula invites you to welcome literature's most shadowy figure into your home. Feel the terror of being hunted and the thrill of the hunt. Don't miss this year's best new audio thriller, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Audible's new full cast original adaptation. Written by Robin Ahern, now on Audible. Listen to The Darkness. Go to audible.com/listen to Dracula.

• 1:15:33David Sims?

  So Alex Warner wrote a draft, gave up, was like, I don't know how to do this.

• 1:15:38Griffin Newman?

  Alan Warner.

• 1:15:38David Sims?

  Alan Warner, sorry, whoever it was.

• 1:15:39Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, his name's Alan.

• 1:15:40David Sims?

  Who cares?

• 1:15:42Griffin Newman?

  I care a lot.

• 1:15:42David Sims?

  No, I think we should never speak of him again. No, and then Ramsey, who wrote this, co-wrote this with Leanna Dugnini.

• 1:15:49Griffin Newman?

  As an animator and I think it was a film school friend of hers.

• 1:15:52David Sims?

  Said it took him about eight months to adapt it, which makes sense because the book is one big monologue. So it's not exactly like screaming out for a screenplay structure.

• 1:16:00Griffin Newman?

  And there's plaudier stuff in the book. She gets pregnant.

• 1:16:06Griffin Newman?

  From the rave hookup. Yeah, yeah, there's like stuff like.

• 1:16:09David Sims?

  That's such a trite.

• 1:16:10Griffin Newman?

  That, exactly. And because of the nature in which the book is like telling the story and you not being able to see her physically. And the reveal of it, it feels less trite, I think, than it would cinematically.

• 1:16:22David Sims?

  I will also say.

• 1:16:23Griffin Newman?

  She strips it way back.

• 1:16:24David Sims?

  And this may speak to many people who are listening. She says, "I might have finished it sooner for the fact that I'm not a disciplined person. A typical day will find me getting up too late, getting in a mad panic, drinking seven cups of coffee, smoking loads of." Fags, just British, you know. And then deciding.

• 1:16:42Griffin Newman?

  You put in that.

• 1:16:43David Sims?

  I'm doing a super grass. All right.

• 1:16:46Griffin Newman?

  It sounds like you're doing Borat.

• 1:16:47David Sims?

  I'm trying to obscure the words.

• 1:16:50Griffin Newman?

  I understand.

• 1:16:50David Sims?

  And then deciding to hover the carpet, paint the walls or watch neighbors. Shout out neighbors. Great Australian.

• 1:16:55Griffin Newman?

  I could not relate more to this quote.

• 1:16:56David Sims?

  Anything to avoid writing. Luckily, my co writers more organized the script. You know, finally did come together with her help.

• 1:17:02Speaker 02

  I love that. This is actually just what she tells the publishers at the end, which is one of the funniest things, the funniest like lines about writing ever. Like when you're a writer, you can knock off whenever you want. So true.

• 1:17:15Griffin Newman?

  It's also like, you can't make these movies without some acute sense of insight.

• 1:17:20David Sims?

  She thought the pregnancy plot was really naff.

• 1:17:23Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:23David Sims?

  Another British expression.

• 1:17:25Speaker 02

  What does naff mean again?

• 1:17:26David Sims?

  Just corny.

• 1:17:27Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:17:27David Sims?

  You know, like, just kind of like, she just thought it was dumb.

• 1:17:30Griffin Newman?

  Well.

• 1:17:30David Sims?

  She says there's also a bunch of stuff about the kind of the culture in Oban, which is the city, town, cities, a little strong that she lives in in Scotland, that she also is kind of like, yeah, let's, let's leave the town faster. Like, forget that.

• 1:17:44Griffin Newman?

  I think her point, which is right too, is having the pregnancy at the end makes it feel like that's the actual rebirth moment. That's the new identity that her kind of like opting into.

• 1:17:54Speaker 02

  A man would write that.

• 1:17:56Griffin Newman?

  Right. Where she's just like, no, it's shit. Selling the book is the thing.

• 1:18:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:00Griffin Newman?

  Right. And then restarting the cycle.

• 1:18:02David Sims?

  And then, of course, the big thing, of course, is the book is a monologue. This movie has no voiceover monologue, no explanation of what she's doing, which makes the movie a five star masterpiece that we should just like kiss the feet of, in my opinion.

• 1:18:14Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:14David Sims?

  Like, it would suck so much if she was like, maybe I should go to fucking. And it's like, no, we just like, she is inscrutable.

• 1:18:21Griffin Newman?

  999 out of 1,000 people would leave some amount of voiceover in if the book is this.

• 1:18:27David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:28Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:28David Sims?

  They scraped together, budget is rated between like four to $6 million, somewhere in there, but you know, lots of foreign, you know.

• 1:18:35Speaker 02

  I mean, just to go back to that real quick, just something like.

• 1:18:39Griffin Newman?

  No, go ahead.

• 1:18:39Speaker 02

  But, but like to also having her do voiceover narration would make her inherently a literary character, which the point is she is not.

• 1:18:47Griffin Newman?

  She's fundamentally not.

• 1:18:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:48Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:18:49David Sims?

  Some of the people they thought to play her, I love this, that she was like, I wanted like Sissy Spacek, right? Like come, you know, like I wanted a Scottish Sissy Spacek age 20.

• 1:18:59Griffin Newman?

  And then she ultimately gets to work with Sissy, but the, can you read her quote about Sissy Spacek, which I think is really good. Is it in there?

• 1:19:05David Sims?

  Uh, I wanted someone between, uh, someone a bit left of center, not conventionally beautiful, ideally with the kind of not of this world quality that Sissy Spacek had at the time. She likes Christina Ricci, but obviously she's American, the British actresses she names Samantha Morton, Laura Fraser, Kelly McDonald makes sense, just in terms of like age.

• 1:19:23Griffin Newman?

  Right. She said Laura Fraser, she thought was too conventionally attractive, who later becomes best known for, uh, Breaking Bad.

• 1:19:30David Sims?

  Mm hmm. She's, uh, the, the tightly wound pharma exec person, uh, Laura Lydia.

• 1:19:35Griffin Newman?

  Yes. And Kelly McDonald makes sense as like the most prominent Scottish actress at that point in time. But Samantha Morton's popping. If I could just circle back to her comment about like, uh, things that are more easily sellable in the movie, right? Cause later in the dossier, she calls out like how much it kind of collapsed commercially and how angry the financiers were with the movie. And she was like, yeah, I wasn't interested in making like a commercial movie. I think she was getting smart enough to know there were enough elements in this that she could use to trick financiers.

• 1:20:07David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:20:08Griffin Newman?

  That it's not that she thought the movie would be a hit. Yeah. But then she says, hey, if I get an up and coming actress, especially when she identifies someone who has an Oscar nomination under her belt, and I can get her for cheap and the movie doesn't cost that much, and it has like nudity and rock music and drugs and party scenes, that dumb investors who like, don't actually read scripts or understand what movies are, go like, that sounds like a hit. And then they watch the final film and they get furious.

• 1:20:34David Sims?

  Samantha Morton, she sees photographs of her. I like this quote. Look, and she says she looks really quite in a trance, something with her eyes. It's just, she just looks kind of bored is what Lynn like sort of reads from her, which she just thinks is perfect for more of her. Um, and on one meeting, she's like, yeah, I'm casting you right away. Like there's no, she'd been, she'd done this movie called Under the Skin. Obviously she'd also done like Sweet and Low Down and stuff, as we said, but Under the Skin is the movie that, uh, she shouts out, obviously not the Glazer movie. It's just like a, um, Or nineties British indie drama about girls whose mom dies and they're sad. Never seen it.

• 1:21:14Griffin Newman?

  I've never seen it either, but what was the big TV thing? A Band of Gold was a TV thing she did that was a very big mini series. She did a Jane Eyre.

• 1:21:24David Sims?

  She did Jane Eyre and MI, I remember those.

• 1:21:26Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:21:26David Sims?

  I don't know what Band of Gold is, but it looks like something. She's, you know, Samantha Morton's from Nottingham. She has a crazy life story. Her parents got divorced and then her parents were, I think, just could not raise the children. Her father was an alcoholic, her mother was in a violent relationship. So she was a ward of court and then she was in foster homes. And she's like a classic, like Britain has such a, a structure for teens who go into like youth drama. Because there's all these soap operas and all this youth theater and stuff like, and she just like got sucked into that world.

• 1:21:59Griffin Newman?

  But her teen years, I mean, she.

• 1:22:01David Sims?

  They were rough.

• 1:22:02Griffin Newman?

  She survives child sexual abuse. She has serious substance addiction issues. She's unhoused for like a full year.

• 1:22:10David Sims?

  A hundred percent.

• 1:22:10Griffin Newman?

  And then drama is right.

• 1:22:13David Sims?

  The stabilizing force.

• 1:22:14Griffin Newman?

  And then she basically like kind of stabilizes out by her teens, early twenties, starts working. And people were always like, what's your craft? And she was like, my toolbox is my past and I never want to talk about it. Like I'm pulling from all my experiences. My life was very difficult. It gave me a perspective to understand where to pull emotions from. And she didn't really start talking about the stuff, I feel like until her late twenties, early thirties in her career.

• 1:22:37David Sims?

  Right. She's not Scottish and she doesn't use a Scottish accent in this movie.

• 1:22:42Griffin Newman?

  Nottingham?

• 1:22:42David Sims?

  From Nottingham, which is in, I mean, you know, you all know from Robin Hood, but is a, you know, I, no offense to any Nottingham listeners, but kind of a, you know, just boring ish part of the central England.

• 1:22:54Griffin Newman?

  Boring is, it's got merry men going around stealing.

• 1:22:57David Sims?

  Unfortunately it lacks for merry men. It's kind of pretty.

• 1:23:00Speaker 02

  I guess it's true. She doesn't have a Scottish accent, but it's like she talks so infrequently and the most she does speak is when she's like, I, I felt like she was affecting the British accent, like the London accent for the publishing people or trying to be.

• 1:23:14David Sims?

  It's funny because she's played like she's Mary Queen of Scots, Elizabeth the Golden Age. But and I think she could have done an accent.

• 1:23:22Griffin Newman?

  Ramsey said she could have done a Scottish accent, but I liked her accent and the fact that she had a similar background.

• 1:23:27David Sims?

  And she just was like, I want you to be you. I don't want.

• 1:23:29Griffin Newman?

  Your voice is unique enough. I don't want you having to reach outside of yourself. Yeah, too far.

• 1:23:34David Sims?

  Samantha Morton says, uh, the music really helped. She listens to music, uh, as part of her likes or preparation. She would have headphones on.

• 1:23:43Griffin Newman?

  The first movie where they would play the music on set while she was working so that her process was always listening to stuff right up until they called action and then taking the headphones off.

• 1:23:52David Sims?

  She loves this.

• 1:23:53Griffin Newman?

  Here's a movie that lets her wear headphones that plays the stuff over the loudspeakers. Yeah.

• 1:23:57David Sims?

  She says she was, she would love to make Morvern Callar two, but I don't think that'll ever happen. I hear Morvern Callar might be an Avengers doomsday. Yes.

• 1:24:05Griffin Newman?

  Do you know there is a sequel book?

• 1:24:07David Sims?

  Well, let's, let's make it happen.

• 1:24:08Griffin Newman?

  It is expanded universe. I have not even cracked this one open yet, but Alan Turner's These Demented Lands, which is the second installment in the Morvern Callar.

• 1:24:17David Sims?

  Which she does. She fights Doctor Doom.

• 1:24:19Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:23David Sims?

  Yeah, it's a book he wrote, I think, just two years later. Like it was, is, you know, anyway. Morton also says she loved being directed by someone who was basically her age. Like I think Lynn Ramsey's a little older than her, but like, you know.

• 1:24:34Griffin Newman?

  Her first kind of contemporary.

• 1:24:36David Sims?

  Versus I assume on like British TV, it's a lot of like fuddy duddies. She says she's a beautiful woman. She's a very sexy woman. She's very confident about herself and that's very infectious. Being around her makes you feel powerful in your own species. Pretty cool. Uh, the, the girl who plays her best friend Kathleen McDermott is a true like found her at a fucking hairdresser.

• 1:24:58Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:24:59David Sims?

  Like Scotland, like total natural, uh, professional actor. She's great.

• 1:25:04Speaker 02

  She's so, so good. And I, I always was like, I mean, I guess she was on like British TV or something after that, but she hasn't.

• 1:25:10David Sims?

  Did she do some work? Yeah, she's got a Wikipedia page.

• 1:25:14Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:14David Sims?

  Yeah. Uh, and I mean, like, and Dolly Wells is in this.

• 1:25:17Griffin Newman?

  Yes, she's the book agent.

• 1:25:18David Sims?

  As the book agent, where I feel like I know from. Yeah, like, uh, you know, working with, uh, Emily Mortimer and Noel Fielding and.

• 1:25:26Griffin Newman?

  But she's so amazing in, uh, Can You Ever Forgive Me? That's a performance I fucking adore.

• 1:25:31David Sims?

  That feels like a movie you watch a lot.

• 1:25:32Griffin Newman?

  I watch that movie once a year.

• 1:25:34David Sims?

  Yeah, you're just like throwing it on.

• 1:25:35Griffin Newman?

  That is like another like peak depression cinema for me. I think that movie like depicts depression about as well as anything, uh, short of the Lynn Ramsey filmography.

• 1:25:44David Sims?

  What's?

• 1:25:46Griffin Newman?

  Meryl Heller up to?

• 1:25:47David Sims?

  No, I know what she's working Melissa up to. What happened there?

• 1:25:52Griffin Newman?

  I mean, do you need I say it? Seven Ben Falcone movies.

• 1:25:56David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:57Griffin Newman?

  She just was hot committed to working with her husband. Who I I cannot think of a filmmaker.

• 1:26:03David Sims?

  She's got nothing on the docket.

• 1:26:05Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:05David Sims?

  Like, I mean, maybe she's doing TV.

• 1:26:07Griffin Newman?

  She like does shit. I don't know. She like hosts like fucking kids say the darnedest thing. She's doing SNL. She's like, at the time we're recording this, they just announced she's hosting SNL in a couple.

• 1:26:17David Sims?

  Yeah, which she'll be funny like.

• 1:26:18Griffin Newman?

  She'll be great, but it is one of those.

• 1:26:20Speaker 02

  She's not promoting anything. She's going.

• 1:26:21Griffin Newman?

  I don't know. Maybe she's got some fucking Hulu show I'm not aware of.

• 1:26:26David Sims?

  You never know.

• 1:26:27Speaker 02

  You never know. That's the unfortunate thing.

• 1:26:29Griffin Newman?

  It is.

• 1:26:29Speaker 02

  She could be doing all sorts of shit. She could be on like her own Walking Dead spin off and we would never know.

• 1:26:34David Sims?

  Now that I might be interested to watch.

• 1:26:37Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:37David Sims?

  That could bring me back to the Walking Dead.

• 1:26:39Griffin Newman?

  The Walking Dead, Cole in the Book of Tammy.

• 1:26:41David Sims?

  No.

• 1:26:41Griffin Newman?

  Tammy's back.

• 1:26:42David Sims?

  Or she's fucking. Can you ever forgive me, lady? She's just like.

• 1:26:45Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 1:26:46David Sims?

  She doesn't even go outside. There's just zombies like moving around outside, but she's just at home, just being.

• 1:26:51Griffin Newman?

  Well, you guys watched Unfrosted, correct?

• 1:26:53David Sims?

  I saw Unfrosted.

• 1:26:53Griffin Newman?

  Did you? Did you get Unfrosted?

• 1:26:55David Sims?

  Emily watched Unfrosted.

• 1:26:57Speaker 02

  I'm still 100% frosted.

• 1:26:59David Sims?

  You have not removed the frosted.

• 1:27:00Speaker 02

  Stay that way.

• 1:27:01Griffin Newman?

  She is so good in that movie.

• 1:27:02David Sims?

  She's funny.

• 1:27:03Griffin Newman?

  And especially because she's sharing scenes with Jerry Seinfeld, who is fundamentally not a movie star.

• 1:27:07David Sims?

  He's a committed actor. How dare you?

• 1:27:10Speaker 02

  There's got to be a name for a kind of take where it's like, it's not a hot take. It's just a like, who cares take like, sure, I guess she's probably good and unfrosted.

• 1:27:19Griffin Newman?

  Tasted pop tart take. It is more a statement about how bad the Falcone movies are. And and that her just basically serving like core competency.

• 1:27:30David Sims?

  Maybe the Falcone movies are good.

• 1:27:32Griffin Newman?

  They're not.

• 1:27:32David Sims?

  It's not like we're watching them.

• 1:27:33Griffin Newman?

  David, I I tried to do a little revisit recently because I was like. Uh, my girlfriend and I really like watching like 2000s, 2010s live action comedies that we skipped in theaters at the time. Because we're just like, we didn't know how good we had it. And so often you throw on something like Drillbit Taylor and you're like, fuck, this is like a nine out of 10 now.

• 1:27:51Speaker 02

  Beautifully shot.

• 1:27:54Griffin Newman?

  Film, look at the grain structure. And I was like, let me try to fuck around with some of the Falcones. And especially the ones I skipped and they are like abysmal. They are like anti comedy. And then her showing up in like Unfrosted and just having like jokes in the movie shot by like Bill Pope. You're just like, fuck, right. If anyone puts her in a half decent thing, she is good. She has not lost skills. She's just not chosen a good project in fucking forever.

• 1:28:21David Sims?

  Marvin Carter.

• 1:28:21Griffin Newman?

  She was Ursula.

• 1:28:22David Sims?

  She was. Films in Scotland, in, in Oban, where they, uh, where the novel is set. All those places are real, the flat, the bar.

• 1:28:31Speaker 02

  I said Glasgow, that was like probably insulting for me to assume it, cause it's like one of the only towns I've heard of.

• 1:28:37David Sims?

  Well, Glasgow is a, a major metropolis and this is a shitty seaside town. No offense to Oban, for all I know, it's a great seaside town, but I do find that in Britain, when you go to the seaside towns, well, and I might get dragged for this by seaside town residents in Britain. You know, they're from an era before airplanes, when it was kinda like, if you wanna see the sea and you live in Britain, you gotta go to the seaside towns.

• 1:29:00Speaker 02

  So rude, but it's so true.

• 1:29:01David Sims?

  You know, pretty quickly, it was kinda like, well, now we have air travel and like, you know, Spain is like an hour away. So like, there's good, you know, and so places like Blackpool and Margate, you know, like, yeah, they have their charms, but it's a little bleaker.

• 1:29:16Speaker 03

  Um, but I love that.

• 1:29:17David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:18Speaker 03

  I think there's, there's, um. Cinematic.

• 1:29:20Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:29:21Speaker 03

  It's a vibe. Griddiness and yet they're on the ocean.

• 1:29:23Speaker 02

  Well, there's.

• 1:29:24David Sims?

  Well, they're on the sea.

• 1:29:25Speaker 02

  Also some bygone like holiday options for people who, yeah, couldn't get on a plane or whatever, like, like the, I went once to the, the remains of the, um, you've seen Carnival of Souls, the horror film.

• 1:29:38David Sims?

  One of my favorite movies of all.

• 1:29:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, same. Uh, like the, but that, that Salt Air Resort that's on the Great Salt Lake is still like, the main structure of it is still there. And I like made a pilgrimage to it. It's just like, can you imagine going on vacation to the shores of the Salt Lake to like this sort of Moroccan style, like.

• 1:29:55David Sims?

  Right. The old, the, how the boardwalk and all that.

• 1:29:58Speaker 02

  Strange. Yeah.

• 1:29:58David Sims?

  Yeah. I mean, kind of a vibe though.

• 1:30:01Speaker 02

  It's such a vibe.

• 1:30:02Griffin Newman?

  I am so sorry, I must interrupt.

• 1:30:04Speaker 02

  Oh no.

• 1:30:04Griffin Newman?

  I just, I have made a terrible discovery. I was like, there must be some Melissa McCarthy thing she's promoting, right? Her last movie was unfrosted. Her next film is an animated film co-written by Ben Falcon called Margie Claus, where you won't believe that she plays Santa Claus's wife.

• 1:30:20David Sims?

  That I'm just kind of like auto F. Let's ignore.

• 1:30:23Griffin Newman?

  Do you know what the actual next upcoming?

• 1:30:24David Sims?

  The JonBenet Ramsey thing.

• 1:30:26Griffin Newman?

  A Paramount plus JonBenet Ramsey show in which her and Clive Owen are playing the parents. Shut that shit down.

• 1:30:33Speaker 03

  Well, luckily, luckily.

• 1:30:35Griffin Newman?

  Can we swing Zazlov in there and start Zazlov-ing other companies?

• 1:30:38David Sims?

  Luckily, it is on Paramount Plus. So it is essentially shut down already. Let's be honest.

• 1:30:43Griffin Newman?

  Who's gonna scale that mountain?

• 1:30:46Griffin Newman?

  That's the last thing anyone should be doing.

• 1:30:48David Sims?

  I would agree.

• 1:30:49Griffin Newman?

  Her top of the list.

• 1:30:50Speaker 03

  I just want to say, since we're talking about the seaside town thing, I think snow and movies good.

• 1:30:59Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:31:00Speaker 03

  Always good.

• 1:31:00Speaker 02

  It's always, especially when it's real. It's real snow.

• 1:31:03Speaker 03

  But I especially love a beach snow situation.

• 1:31:07David Sims?

  It is. It is a very stark image.

• 1:31:09Speaker 03

  I'm so obsessed with this and I've been saying to Nellie, I've been threatening Nellie for years now. I'm like, we need to do a snow beach situation. I want to have like a cabin, but that's on the beach that has a fireplace.

• 1:31:22Griffin Newman?

  Eternal sunshine.

• 1:31:23Speaker 02

  And so until that moment, I have wonderful news for you that Taylor Swift actually wrote a song called Snow on the Beach featuring Lana Del Rey. And I think that might be the song for you.

• 1:31:35Speaker 03

  I have so many mixed feelings about this news right now. I'm gonna need to.

• 1:31:39Griffin Newman?

  It's already gotten married.

• 1:31:41Speaker 02

  I know, for dance.

• 1:31:45Speaker 02

  No, it's, it's true. Like I will say though.

• 1:31:47David Sims?

  Yeah, go to Montauk in the winter.

• 1:31:50Speaker 02

  I mean, there is something about going.

• 1:31:53David Sims?

  Sorry, Emily, please, please.

• 1:31:54Speaker 02

  I mean, the first part of this film in Oban, I guess, like, you know, the, the squalor of these like miserable looking house parties. It's also like deeply familiar to me. It's like, I feel like I like grew up going to these parties, jumping through the bonfire. This is like such a thing. But it's like.

• 1:32:10David Sims?

  Anything to feel alive.

• 1:32:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. And smoking a zillion cigarettes and slipping and breaking your neck in the kitchen because of like spilled Jell-O shots or whatever, like all very familiar. But like, then you go outside and it's fucking Scotland and it's like such an insane effect of like, yeah, the kids are doing the same thing. They're doing like basically everywhere in the world, right? And like they're partying the same way. But then you step outside and you're like in this like stark, like almost overwhelming splendor and the snow and the mountains and shit. It's like, it's wild.

• 1:32:40Griffin Newman?

  But if you grow up there and this is your life, you resent it just as much as wherever.

• 1:32:43Speaker 02

  I mean, this is the thing like I, I've been thinking for a while. Like I, I grew up the first part of my childhood in Washington state. Every single day I saw Mount Rainier, like on my way to school and I totally took it for granted. And then like only recently, when I've been looking for things like little, little vacations that would be easy to go or like easy flights out of LA or whatever. It's like, huh, you know, it is actually really pretty up there and people like it, but like to me, it just represented just this really boring, like, you know, I, I, I did not enjoy my childhood there at all. And like, I would never, but yeah, it's like, it's, it's, it's sort of wild to be experiencing complete like torpor while you're in the majesty of nature.

• 1:33:24Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:33:26Speaker 02

  That's what it's about.

• 1:33:27David Sims?

  And then, I mean, then like they shot this film chronologically, which is interesting, but I think often suits, especially like a non-professional actor, just to be like in the story.

• 1:33:37Griffin Newman?

  Also a movie like this that isn't plotty where it's like, you need to be able to really chart emotional movements because they're so subtle. And it's like Samantha Morton is like barely kind of, this is a real, like the camera can see you think performance. It's so internalized. She is an actress who feels translucent, you know, is not like emoting overly. Uh, and so yeah, it's like the continuity of that is really hard to track if there's not clear like, oh, in this scene, I'm reacting to this thing and I can just stay in the moment.

• 1:34:11Speaker 02

  I just do not, as a director, like I just, I mean, you have to be like, yeah, you have to basically be like telepathic with your actor, like to, to, to get that sort of continuity and to be have, have this like legible readable thing that's like more interested and open than any voiceover narration or whatever it would be that to follow. I don't know. I just think it's like, it always awes me.

• 1:34:35Griffin Newman?

  It's interesting when, I, I was thinking about this while we were watching it, that like when directors have specific acting styles, when directors have like established, this is what their movies are like. And these are what the performances are like in them. It feels like, well, first of all, if you become successful enough, if you become Wes Anderson and it becomes so known that any actor signing up, any actor auditioning, any actor offered a role is like, I think I know what he wants. I think I can guess how he wants this performed, right? But for someone like Lynn Ramsey on her second film, but even now, when it's her fifth movie, but like, she's not super ubiquitous. How much of it is like a rehearsal process, meeting, discussions with actors to tune,

• 1:35:19Griffin Newman?

  attune everyone to the same wavelength versus how much of it is a kind of tone setting on set, a kind of like maintaining of mood? And like, I think a really careful curation of the people? How you like staff the entire movie and music and yeah?

• 1:35:38Speaker 02

  I mean, I can imagine, like, I would probably cheat and use music if I'm thinking about how I would do, like, just like, if you just know that this is going, like, you kind of like have this Pavlovian response to these different music cues and stuff that that, but yeah, I don't know. It's, it's, it's wild. I will say, I, I, I feel like Jen Lawrence and Rob Pattinson, at this point, knew there's a kind of performance that you do in a, in a Lynn Ramsey movie. And I sensed that a little bit, not a negative at all, by the way.

• 1:36:07Griffin Newman?

  No, no, I think that was the first case of that. And maybe of her reputation preceding her in that kind of way. And I read an interview with Jennifer Lawrence just the other day where she was like, the thing that's like crazy about working with her is there's a seven page dialogue scene and we've like worked it and we're word perfect and we get on set and she's just like, I don't think there should be any words in this.

• 1:36:28Speaker 02

  Let's just jump up and down, take off our clothes and yeah.

• 1:36:32Griffin Newman?

  Smash her head. Right, and there's, there's no safety net. And she's like, if it's not good, I won't use it. And if there's three seconds of a good piece in there, I might use it in a different place, you know? Like, that's part of it, I think, sometimes is not establishing an environment where everyone is so locked in that everything is perfect, but more creating a space where people feel free to sort of explore stuff and then knowing how to identify the pieces you need.

• 1:36:55David Sims?

  So the first chunk of this movie, we've, we've discussed some, but are there things we want to talk about in the Scotland section before we?

• 1:37:04Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, I always kind of forget that it's really kind of split in two. Basically at the halfway point.

• 1:37:11David Sims?

  Right. I was kind of like, right. It's only like 15 minutes in Scotland. It's like, no, it's not like it's, it actually.

• 1:37:17Griffin Newman?

  It's like 45, 45.

• 1:37:18David Sims?

  Right. Not a movie about someone clubbing the entire time. Right. It is her kind of like pretending to be normal, you know, like whatever, just kind of like acting like nothing's happened, I guess.

• 1:37:29Griffin Newman?

  You don't see the suicide note and have her put her name on the book until like minute 30?

• 1:37:35David Sims?

  Right. She doesn't come around. Well, you see the suicide note right away, but.

• 1:37:38Griffin Newman?

  You see lines of it. You don't get to read the full thing.

• 1:37:41David Sims?

  That's true. But yeah, you see her make the act of decision. It's not like this happens and then she just gets up and is like, I'm going to print out the novel, put my name on it and send it out. She comes to that decision.

• 1:37:51Speaker 02

  Like it's so earned by the time she does it because it's a pretty extreme thing to do. But by the time she does it, it's like, okay, we're ready and we're ready for some action. It's like, we've been in hanging, hanging man mode this whole time. And finally we're ready to like go somewhere.

• 1:38:05Griffin Newman?

  And it's been several days with the body and you're seeing her be like, fuck, let me just put this somewhere else. Like I'll deal with this tomorrow, but you're aware of the fact that you're like, there's a ticking clock to when this starts rotting. There's a quickening, clicking talk.

• 1:38:18Speaker 02

  Deodorizing in the apartment. I can't even imagine.

• 1:38:21Griffin Newman?

  It's only going to become a worse problem.

• 1:38:24Speaker 03

  Oh, does she burn the pizza on purpose, you think? To cover up the smell?

• 1:38:28Griffin Newman?

  I don't think that was like.

• 1:38:29David Sims?

  Interesting take though. I like that.

• 1:38:31Griffin Newman?

  I think she just got distracted and fucked it up.

• 1:38:34Speaker 02

  Has anybody in a, in a Lynn Ramsey movie ever cooked anything like successfully? I'm just thinking of the macaroni and cheese.

• 1:38:41Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:43Speaker 02

  It's just bad. It's just, yeah, I love it though. It's.

• 1:38:47Griffin Newman?

  I'll also say as a connoisseur, I think oftentimes a frozen pizza benefits from being a little overcooked.

• 1:38:55David Sims?

  Yeah, I would say I would always go over versus under with a frozen pizza.

• 1:38:59Griffin Newman?

  And it gives it a little extra flavor. It gives a little punch.

• 1:39:02David Sims?

  I love punch.

• 1:39:03Speaker 03

  Uh, okay. Well, I'll say, I think there's something weirdly sentimental about her transporting the body and picking this beautiful location. It's so fucked up, but it feels like she's giving him a proper burial. With like, respect, weirdly?

• 1:39:23Griffin Newman?

  Yes, yes. I also, I said when we were watching this, like, that's a pretty fucking good Halloween costume. It'd be tough to do in public, but Morvern topless with the Walkman taped to her torso, the sunglasses, the necklace.

• 1:39:38Speaker 02

  The cognac glass.

• 1:39:39Griffin Newman?

  The cognac glass, and then like, just increasing blood splatter.

• 1:39:44Speaker 02

  It's so good.

• 1:39:45Griffin Newman?

  It's pretty unbelievable. Yeah.

• 1:39:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is funny. It goes from that, which feels so, I mean, clearly she has to get completely wasted in order to like, do it, like, actually do the physical act of it. But then, yeah, you're right. Like, once it's the burial, it feels like the complete flip side of it. Okay, like, now, this is past the, the actual physical unpleasantness of this dead body. It's like, okay, I can actually put this person to rest now. And like, and then there's just this moment of total elation after she does it, where she's like, running down the hill. And that's like, when you're like, oh, wait, this is somehow a ticket out for her. Like, this, this whole thing has been, she's gonna turn it into that.

• 1:40:24Griffin Newman?

  And there's almost this, like, three-women thing of, she has almost magically become a different person now. There's, at least in real time, she's starting to process this, like, new identity of, well, I have to maintain some continuity. I'm here with my friend. But like, I'm changed by this event. And also, what if I start molding myself in a new way to meet the person who has written that book and has submitted it and can't even talk about what it is, or where it came from?

• 1:40:54Speaker 03

  Kind of also a nice location for jeans, if I'm being honest.

• 1:40:58Speaker 02

  Oh, wow. Okay, this is what we're getting to. Yeah.

• 1:41:00David Sims?

  Oh, he sees something being buried and his mind goes right to jeans.

• 1:41:04Speaker 02

  Wow. What if you did, like, a limited edition, like, single malt Scotch buried with the jeans?

• 1:41:12David Sims?

  Oh, interesting. So you're sort of like, or what about, I mean, I don't want to give you too many ideas, but what about, like, barrel aged jeans?

• 1:41:20Griffin Newman?

  That's like a Scotch.

• 1:41:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:41:22Speaker 03

  Damn it, you guys.

• 1:41:24David Sims?

  See, I unfortunately knew you might like that idea.

• 1:41:27Speaker 03

  I love that idea.

• 1:41:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:41:28Speaker 03

  You know, maybe I like, you know, kind of toast the inside.

• 1:41:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:41:32Griffin Newman?

  Sure. Like a frozen pizza.

• 1:41:34David Sims?

  Nellie's like, Ben, what are you rolling up the stairs?

• 1:41:36Speaker 03

  Nothing.

• 1:41:37Griffin Newman?

  Nothing.

• 1:41:39Griffin Newman?

  I was saying, I was talking about Ben being worried that this movie was going to be too emotionally devastating. But at one point I turned over and he was crying, Kiki's Delivery Service style. And I said, Ben, what is it? And he just went, it's a shame she took those jeans off his body.

• 1:41:52David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:41:52Speaker 03

  Should have left them on there.

• 1:41:53Griffin Newman?

  Should have left them on before it married. Yeah.

• 1:41:56Speaker 02

  They did look like nice jeans.

• 1:41:57Griffin Newman?

  We both laughed at the bit when she decides to go out to the pub with her friends and she reaches into his pocket for money.

• 1:42:05Speaker 02

  That is the kind of like gallows humor that I just adore where it's like, it's also like, oh, she's not going to take all like 40 quid or whatever. She's going to put the other half back in and then say, sorry.

• 1:42:17Griffin Newman?

  And I was like, he's not going to use it.

• 1:42:19Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:42:19Griffin Newman?

  This isn't his inheritance.

• 1:42:21David Sims?

  What if it was like, um, like Egyptian times, then you needed like money?

• 1:42:26Griffin Newman?

  Oh.

• 1:42:26Speaker 02

  Pay.

• 1:42:27David Sims?

  It's like stuff to pay.

• 1:42:28Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:29Speaker 02

  No, I, but I, I think it like, I mean, the reason it's, it's, it's funny because it is like, it speaks to this total in between state of like whatever pre-stage of grief she's in. Or it's like, I don't even know if this is real yet. Like it's this, yeah, it's, it's so good.

• 1:42:45Griffin Newman?

  The subject matter of every one of her films, which is fictional, feels like the kind of bizarre human story that would then become like a news item and then get turned into a shitty Netflix documentary. Or a Paramount Plus series starring Melissa McCarthy, right? Where you're like, this story is so bizarre and the twists are so weird. And the twists are these little details of things that are often retold to us in these very dramatic, salacious kind of like, um, scandalous ways. But in the moment, it's just like a woman standing over a dead body being like, I don't have money on me. He has it in his pocket.

• 1:43:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:43:23Griffin Newman?

  And then you could just imagine an FBI detective, like, straight to camera going like, when we searched the body, we found fingerprints inside his pockets and 45 quid missing. You know, and it suddenly feels like this fucking monster.

• 1:43:35David Sims?

  It's weird that these American cops are trying to solve this strange, this strange thing.

• 1:43:40Speaker 02

  I mean, yeah, there is a, like, this is a movie. And I think I, this is why I liked it originally, like, it's about a scammer. It's a, it's a movie about a scam and it's really hard to think about this now after this wave of sort of millennial scammer narratives, your Anadolu's and all that, which are told in that fashion or this sort of dishy, like, whatever fashion. It's like, no, this is actually about the psychological state that drives one to scam. And it's a lot different than, you know, the dishy New York Mag story or whatever.

• 1:44:12Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, yeah. And, and, right, we, we now live in a world that regurgitates those stories and spits them back out to us 10 ways. We, we are like so inundated with the same narratives being repeated over and over again. Yeah, I, I, I love how like incremental this is. And also that, not to jump ahead, but it like knows exactly when to get out of the store. Which is like, she has gotten the check. And we have no idea what happens next.

• 1:44:40David Sims?

  I feel like she plays the slow dawning on her face that 100 means 100,000 pounds.

• 1:44:48Speaker 02

  It's so. It's so funny.

• 1:44:50David Sims?

  She doesn't do like a big laugh or like a sort of crazy face.

• 1:44:54Speaker 02

  It looks like she has to fart, like, it's, she does this thing where she goes, I, I love, it makes me laugh every single time. Cause she goes like, mm, can I go? Like, like, it's just this, it's such a great way to play it.

• 1:45:05Griffin Newman?

  It's also like a Sean C. Gardner moment where they keep asking her questions and her not knowing how to answer makes them go like, fuck, we're dealing with like, this is a genius and like a master negotiator. She doesn't have reps. She says 100,000, she doesn't even respond.

• 1:45:21Speaker 02

  Supermarket, oh my god.

• 1:45:23Griffin Newman?

  Like, oh my god, we're gonna be able to sell this so well. The like, fucking like, tabloid interviews with supermarket novelists.

• 1:45:40Griffin Newman?

  Welcome to 215.

• 1:45:41Speaker 04

  Maple Drive. We just put this property on the market.

• 1:45:46Speaker 05

  Love the crown molding.

• 1:45:47Speaker 04

  Oh, wait until you see the walk-in closets and the bathroom tile.

• 1:45:51Speaker 05

  Does it have Verizon FiOS? You know, 100% fiber internet.

• 1:45:55Speaker 04

  No FiOS, but it looks like it's got cable. Let's check out the kitchen.

• 1:45:58Speaker 05

  No FiOS? Yeah, no, thank you.

• 1:46:02Speaker 04

  Don't you want to see the rest? Okay, bye bye.

• 1:46:04David Sims?

  Get Verizon FiOS because when you're moving, it's 100% or nothing.

• 1:46:16Griffin Newman?

  Uh, let's, let's talk about the Jet One holiday.

• 1:46:19Speaker 02

  The what holiday?

• 1:46:20Griffin Newman?

  Isn't that the meme?

• 1:46:22David Sims?

  Nothing beats a Jet Two holiday. Fuck it's two. And you can save 50 pounds per person.

• 1:46:29Griffin Newman?

  Was that like an omnipresent commercial when you were growing up?

• 1:46:32David Sims?

  No, no, no, no, I think it's a more recent commercial because I've read interviews with the lady who, uh, you know, does the voiceover.

• 1:46:38Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:46:39David Sims?

  And apparently she's just been using any of us, but right, it became a TikTok meme. You put that over some hilarious footage of someone's, you know, whatever holiday going wrong.

• 1:46:49Griffin Newman?

  But I feel like it's now become that audio over footage of literally anything.

• 1:46:53David Sims?

  Sure, right now it's any catastrophe, really.

• 1:46:55Griffin Newman?

  It's six, seven, it's all this shit feels like the point is that the meme doesn't mean anything and it doesn't make sense.

• 1:47:02David Sims?

  I think, I think nothing beats a Jet Two holiday.

• 1:47:04Griffin Newman?

  Okay, nothing beats a Jet Two holiday. She goes on a Jet Two holiday.

• 1:47:07Speaker 02

  Have you ever been on a Jet Two holiday, David?

• 1:47:08David Sims?

  Yeah, definitely. I mean, like, that was the, like, the budget airline. And then there's just all these countries. I mean, where they're going is like club country, right? I mean, like, is it?

• 1:47:17Speaker 02

  Spain.

• 1:47:18David Sims?

  They're in Spain. It's Almeria is where they shot it. I mean, there's lots of places, which is, Almeria is on the coast. I mean, on, but on the continent, but obviously people go to Ibiza and like the other islands and all that. Uh, I never did that. That's kind of like going to Cancun, right? Like in America, right? Like that's like you're going to Club City.

• 1:47:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:47:36David Sims?

  But like, I went to Eastern Europe where you can like, basically just like drink like a fool. You can take a, you could take a plane that cost one pound.

• 1:47:44Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 1:47:45David Sims?

  Like, like back in the easy jet days. I don't think that really exists anymore.

• 1:47:48Griffin Newman?

  Actually, it sounds like nothing does beat a Jet Two holiday if it's one pound.

• 1:47:51David Sims?

  But like the whole thing.

• 1:47:52Speaker 02

  What about Venga Airlines?

• 1:47:53David Sims?

  I do, I mean, the Venga bus is, is, uh, fuck, I don't remember the lyrics. It's coming and everybody's jumping.

• 1:48:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:48:01David Sims?

  New York to San Francisco. Wow. Uh, I feel like. The whole thing with EasyJet, obviously, is you would get on, it was like one pound plus airport fees. So it would be like 30 pounds, but it would still be so cheap.

• 1:48:13Griffin Newman?

  And you have to bring your own seat?

• 1:48:14David Sims?

  I mean, that was basically the vibe. It was certainly, there weren't even like boarding groups. It was just like, all right, everybody on and like the people getting on weren't like, you know, passengers in three piece suits.

• 1:48:27Griffin Newman?

  Each passenger must contribute one cup of fuel.

• 1:48:35Speaker 02

  Comes with a little measure.

• 1:48:36Griffin Newman?

  A paper cup of fuel.

• 1:48:38David Sims?

  I mean, and so, and there would be these cities like Tallinn in Estonia or whatever, where, you know, they'd opened up post-Cold War and then they joined the EU and then they were basically like, fuck, like, we're happy to like have people from other countries just come and spend money here. Like, the beer is cheap, we'll have some, you know what I mean? You know, like, my friend had a stroke in Bratislava to relearn the English language. He's doing okay.

• 1:49:04Griffin Newman?

  Oh, my God. I mean, speaking of, do you know that, like, Samantha Morton had an insane stroke?

• 1:49:09David Sims?

  Yeah, that happened later.

• 1:49:10Griffin Newman?

  Like, plaster fell on her head from a set while she was filming. And it happened, she like took 18 months off and basically had to relearn how to like, speak and walk and everything. And then Synecdoche is the movie she makes right after that.

• 1:49:24David Sims?

  She's amazing.

• 1:49:25Griffin Newman?

  Incredible. And but she said, like, that's 18 months of therapy, straight onto that set. And then you see, like, her career after that is very different.

• 1:49:35David Sims?

  Yeah, I feel like she's become, right, a much more erratic presence.

• 1:49:39Griffin Newman?

  She directed a movie that I think is quite good, but is incredibly difficult.

• 1:49:42David Sims?

  What, The Unloved?

• 1:49:44Griffin Newman?

  Yes. It is, is a film.

• 1:49:46David Sims?

  Obviously about her.

• 1:49:47Griffin Newman?

  It's a reflection of her very difficult childhood.

• 1:49:49David Sims?

  Interesting.

• 1:49:50Griffin Newman?

  And she's continued doing stuff.

• 1:49:52David Sims?

  She's doing stuff.

• 1:49:53Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:49:53David Sims?

  But, yeah, more supporting roles and stuff these days. What did I just see her in?

• 1:49:59Griffin Newman?

  Good question. Well, of course, you loved her in The Whale.

• 1:50:03David Sims?

  Uh, it was an enemy.

• 1:50:05Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure.

• 1:50:06David Sims?

  Which she's plays a similar role as the whale.

• 1:50:09Griffin Newman?

  See, this is the shame. I feel like this is often how they deploy.

• 1:50:12David Sims?

  I'm excited for her to be in the Odyssey.

• 1:50:14Griffin Newman?

  Like Marie.

• 1:50:15David Sims?

  Bet you she's playing someone normal.

• 1:50:16Griffin Newman?

  Marie Barty, party, Barty Salinas did call out that this is a little mini Euro Samantha Morton for us. Cause we're starting off with this. We have the Odyssey and I will say there is an unnamed third Samantha Morton movie already on the schedule.

• 1:50:28Speaker 02

  A third Samantha Morton movie?

• 1:50:30David Sims?

  Yeah. And of course we've discussed Minority Report in the past. Is that the only?

• 1:50:36Griffin Newman?

  But we're gonna have three Samantha Morton movies in the first half of this year.

• 1:50:40David Sims?

  Yeah. How many Fantastic Beasts episode did we do? Six or seven?

• 1:50:44Griffin Newman?

  We did seven on the first movie. Um, that is a crazy thing that she plays. Uh, we need to talk about Kevin's mom basically in that movie.

• 1:50:53David Sims?

  Isn't she like an evangelist too? Is like, she has like a weird kind of like Bible thumping vibe in it. But she is, yes, Ezra Millers in those movies. Those movies are a real kind of like faded dream.

• 1:51:06Speaker 02

  Playing Dumbledore's brother?

• 1:51:09David Sims?

  Yeah, it is kind of none of anyone's business.

• 1:51:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:51:11David Sims?

  Yeah. And the third movie with what Mads Mikkelsen is now the third Grindelwald, basically. And he's like, I will rig the magic election. And you're like, he's doing, can he just try to take over the world already? Like, what is this?

• 1:51:26Griffin Newman?

  Is Fantastic Beasts the ultimate like, uh, I'm sorry for you or congratulations?

• 1:51:31David Sims?

  Ain't reading all that.

• 1:51:35Griffin Newman?

  I know something needs to be said.

• 1:51:37Speaker 02

  Like, okay, so I know that there are crimes of Grindelwald, but are they like?

• 1:51:41David Sims?

  There are some.

• 1:51:42Speaker 02

  Are we, are we happy for him about them or are they bad? Like, we're bad. They're bad.

• 1:51:46David Sims?

  Good.

• 1:51:46Speaker 02

  He's not good. Okay.

• 1:51:47David Sims?

  He's, he's, he's a bit of a rascal.

• 1:51:50Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:51:50Griffin Newman?

  He's like a wizard, Epstein.

• 1:51:52Speaker 02

  Unlike a Morvern color type, he has done a few things wrong.

• 1:51:56Griffin Newman?

  He's not like a fun scam goddess.

• 1:51:57David Sims?

  Yeah, you do not in fact have to hand it to.

• 1:51:59Griffin Newman?

  You don't. In fact, we should stop handing it to Grindelwald.

• 1:52:05Griffin Newman?

  He's so sneaky though.

• 1:52:06David Sims?

  It's just.

• 1:52:07Speaker 02

  What?

• 1:52:08David Sims?

  I rant about it all the time. You know, they do the first movie, the movie's a success. So like, great, here comes more. The second movie is called The Crimes of Grindelwald. What happens in it? He begins to inch towards debuting some crime. So it's like, well, okay, well, you guys need to move it along because this movie didn't do very well.

• 1:52:22Griffin Newman?

  Plans for crimes.

• 1:52:23David Sims?

  Right. And then like, they're like, okay, okay, okay. Third movie, we've recast him, death's gone. Mads Mikkelsen, it's called The Secrets of Dumbledore. And you're like, and I'm like, wrap it up. You, you guys aren't going to make a fourth, just wrap it up. Whatever your plan was that was supposed to be, what, five movies?

• 1:52:38Griffin Newman?

  I think at some point it went to six.

• 1:52:39David Sims?

  Let's compress it to three. And they're like, hmm, what if instead he and Dumbledore kind of have a knowing glance at the end of the movie? And there's way more to go.

• 1:52:47Griffin Newman?

  There's exclusively game.

• 1:52:48Speaker 02

  So the end of it, like a secret is only hinted at at the very end of The Secrets of Dumbledore.

• 1:52:53David Sims?

  Basically, he tries to rig the magic election, which involves some sort of magical moves. It's like the magic moose like kneels at like the winner. And he's like, I'll do a spell that rigs the election and they like stop him. It's not like he tries to take over the world and they stop him.

• 1:53:10Griffin Newman?

  But the other secret.

• 1:53:11David Sims?

  And then when they stop him, he's like, well, I'll be off Dumbledore, who I maybe am gay with. See you later.

• 1:53:16Griffin Newman?

  Right. Like Grindelwald exists in like deep Harry Potter appendix shit as like this was Wizard Hitler. He like predated Voldemort. He was the worst of them all. And then after the books and the movies are over, J K Rowling's like, and by the way, of course Dumbledore's gay. And then starts pointing towards the idea that Dumbledore and Grindelwald had some hidden romance when they were young. So then the third movie is that and people are like, oh shit. And the movie ends with them looking at each other and like raising an eyebrow.

• 1:53:45David Sims?

  I'll just put it, I'll put it this way and then I'll stop talking about this.

• 1:53:48Griffin Newman?

  No, we're going to keep talking about it.

• 1:53:49David Sims?

  In the Harry Potter franchise, yes, in the seventh book, you learn that Dumbledore had a deeper relationship with Grindelwald, who you've sort of heard about as like a Wizard Hitler. And yes, in fact, they were very close before his famous 1945 duel with Grindelwald that defeated him, which is in Harry Potter, obviously the analog to World War II, right? So 1945 was their big showdown. Fantastic Beasts one is set in 1926. Fantastic Beasts two is set in. 1927 Fantastic Beasts three is set in 1932. It's like they're not even close.

• 1:54:22Griffin Newman?

  It's also.

• 1:54:22David Sims?

  To the big showdown.

• 1:54:24Griffin Newman?

  It's even crazier than what you set up because when they announced it, they were like a fun idea, a standalone adventure in the Harry Potter universe. Different time period, a guy with a suitcase cat chases a bunch of creatures. Then everyone sees the first movie, it's a hit, but people don't love it. And they're also like, it's weird. The second half, it just kind of dissolves into like Harry Potter deep lore prequel shit. And Jakey Rollins like, eh, don't worry. I've planned five more movies that are going to get all tangled up in that. And they're like, what about the Fantastic Beasts guy? And they're like, don't really worry about him. He's still here. And then he points at shit that's happening.

• 1:55:00David Sims?

  So true.

• 1:55:01Speaker 02

  All right. Wait, I just want to make sure I've got this right because I've been so out of touch with that whole franchise. So Grindel Wald. He both does crimes and is gay.

• 1:55:10David Sims?

  Correct.

• 1:55:11Speaker 02

  Okay, incredible.

• 1:55:12David Sims?

  Yeah, go off queens, I might say.

• 1:55:15Griffin Newman?

  But we don't have to hand it to him.

• 1:55:17David Sims?

  We don't.

• 1:55:17Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no, no. I would never suggest that.

• 1:55:19Griffin Newman?

  No, I just, let's just draw a clear line here.

• 1:55:21David Sims?

  Morvern collar. We do have to hand it to her.

• 1:55:24Griffin Newman?

  The movie changes film stocks when she gets to Spain.

• 1:55:27David Sims?

  Absolutely.

• 1:55:28Griffin Newman?

  That's the big visual move.

• 1:55:30David Sims?

  Um, yeah, she tells her friend, we're fucking going to Spain. Don't worry about money. I booked us a place. We're going for like two weeks. I already booked you. I'm going to tell your boss, you're taking time off. Uh, her friend is like, by the way, I did fuck your boyfriend. And she's like, mm, well, let's go to Spain. This association is not paused.

• 1:55:52Griffin Newman?

  I mean, she offers it up as the like, I'm sorry, I can't go on the trip with you because I betrayed you and you're going to be so angry.

• 1:55:58Speaker 02

  She's like, okay, no, I've got, I've got even worse plans for this girl now.

• 1:56:02Griffin Newman?

  And she has shipped the book out.

• 1:56:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:56:05David Sims?

  She mails the book and then calls them and is like, I hope you got it. I'm going to Spain. Click. And then the latter half of the movie, I would say, is even lighter on plot than the first half. Not that it's plotless, but like, it is a lot of vibes.

• 1:56:22Speaker 02

  Well, well, speaking of vibes, can we, can we just talk a little bit about the soundtrack?

• 1:56:27David Sims?

  We should.

• 1:56:27Speaker 02

  Because it is such a, it's such a part of the film. It is like a motivating, if, if there is ever no plot, at least she's still like, listening to the next track on her dead boyfriend's mixtape.

• 1:56:40Griffin Newman?

  And she's almost experiencing and processing her emotions exclusively through the music.

• 1:56:44David Sims?

  Sort of a Garden State Galaxy situation.

• 1:56:46Griffin Newman?

  I think kind of a Garden State situation.

• 1:56:48David Sims?

  Absolutely.

• 1:56:49Speaker 02

  I want to get through like 15 minutes without like mentioning a Marvel movie.

• 1:56:53David Sims?

  Hmm.

• 1:56:54Speaker 02

  A Harry Potter movie.

• 1:56:55David Sims?

  Wrong podcast. Okay, so.

• 1:56:57Griffin Newman?

  Excuse me. That's really rude of you to say, when our president is right there on our top shelf, President Red Hulk, we must obey him.

• 1:57:05David Sims?

  There he is.

• 1:57:06Griffin Newman?

  And we are contractually obligated to mention a Marvel movie every 20 minutes.

• 1:57:09David Sims?

  Crimes of Red Hulk.

• 1:57:10Speaker 02

  What's his like agenda? What's his, uh, what are?

• 1:57:14David Sims?

  More pills. Nothing good.

• 1:57:17Speaker 02

  But yeah, I, I was, I feel like I have hallucinated this because I, I know that at some point I have seen an image that is the, the insert on the, on the, on the mixtape.

• 1:57:29Griffin Newman?

  I was trying to pull it up on the Amazon version and it is so blurry that.

• 1:57:33Speaker 02

  You can't, yeah.

• 1:57:34Griffin Newman?

  But it is in there.

• 1:57:35Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:57:35Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:36Speaker 02

  It must just be in that physical release of the.

• 1:57:38Griffin Newman?

  Handwritten.

• 1:57:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:57:39Griffin Newman?

  Tracks.

• 1:57:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:57:40Griffin Newman?

  In the inside. Yeah.

• 1:57:41Speaker 02

  But like, I, cause I wanted to know like, what is actually, you know, canonically on the, on the playlist and what?

• 1:57:47Griffin Newman?

  What's diegetic?

• 1:57:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, what's diegetic? But like, my feeling of like, once you're like, are they playing ween at the pub? You're like, no, we're, we're, we're not, the whole thing is, whether it's diegetic or on the soundtrack, it's all the mixtape is my, is my personal theory of it. Yeah.

• 1:58:06David Sims?

  I agree with that.

• 1:58:07Speaker 02

  Except maybe like the techno music is probably not on the, on the mixtape.

• 1:58:10David Sims?

  Because then at the end, they reveal that she's what she was listening to.

• 1:58:14Speaker 02

  Listening to, yeah, yeah. Although. Is that a flashback or does she just go back to the club? I like to think she goes back to the club.

• 1:58:23David Sims?

  I think she goes back to the club. Oddly dedicated to one of those.

• 1:58:25Speaker 02

  What I would do.

• 1:58:26David Sims?

  Not on the soundtrack despite being an iconic final needle drop. Is that possibly just because the Lamas and the Papas are annoying to negotiate?

• 1:58:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:58:35David Sims?

  Yeah. But yes, what are some, we got can, a lot of can.

• 1:58:39Speaker 02

  A lot of can.

• 1:58:39David Sims?

  Heavy on the can.

• 1:58:40Speaker 02

  Guy liked can.

• 1:58:41Speaker 03

  Cause there's can and then there's a can member named Holger.

• 1:58:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, Holger Sukai, yeah.

• 1:58:46Speaker 03

  Sukai, I've never listened to his stuff.

• 1:58:47Speaker 02

  It's so good.

• 1:58:49Speaker 03

  I gotta fuck with it.

• 1:58:49Speaker 02

  Oh my God, the one that, the, the, the thing that, um, that fragrance is on, which is like an incredible track. It's like 10 minutes long or whatever, that, that album is amazing. I can't remember the name of it.

• 1:58:59David Sims?

  I'm gonna find it. Can of, I think krautrock guys, right? They're like, I've listened to some can because when I got into Radiohead, you know, the cool kids were like, well, you really should listen to can if you're like radio. I guess they're just fucking doing.

• 1:59:11Speaker 02

  No, I totally remember the, I think I, I had a friend's, a roommate's boyfriend who, who burned me of all of the can records on a CD.

• 1:59:19David Sims?

  This one getting back to CD, I'm gonna be burning.

• 1:59:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:59:21David Sims?

  I'm so embarrassed. They're gonna call 911 on my house because it's gonna be burning. What's the song you mentioned? The, the, uh.

• 1:59:27Speaker 02

  Fragrance.

• 1:59:28David Sims?

  Freak.

• 1:59:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:59:29Speaker 03

  I'm so embarrassed to admit that I actually started listening to can after hearing about them for so long, being this like quintessential band. That LCD and the song shouting them out.

• 1:59:43Speaker 02

  Oh, oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:59:44Speaker 03

  Finally got me to do it.

• 1:59:45Speaker 02

  Well, that's a while back. That song came out in like 2005, so I think that's fine. That's probably like.

• 1:59:50David Sims?

  Right, I know.

• 1:59:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Or no, that song was even earlier than that. So, you know, you're good, you're still cool about.

• 2:00:01Speaker 02

  No, I, I, you got, you got Goon Compass of Aphex Twin, which I love.

• 2:00:06David Sims?

  I love Aphex Twin. Who is Goon Compass?

• 2:00:09Speaker 02

  That's the name of the song.

• 2:00:10David Sims?

  It's the name of the song. Goon Compass, okay. I was like, that's not the name of some band I don't know.

• 2:00:15Speaker 02

  No, Goon Compass is, is also a, a name that we have given my dog. And the joke is that the track Goon Compass is playing in his, in his brain at all times. And so occasionally I'll just play it on the phone when he's acting really stupid and it's really, it's really fun.

• 2:00:30Speaker 03

  Goon Compass is what you hold up at a red pill convention.

• 2:00:33Speaker 02

  And it was followed by the subtle goon knife. I don't know.

• 2:00:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:00:38David Sims?

  Boards of Canada.

• 2:00:39Speaker 02

  Boards of Canada.

• 2:00:40David Sims?

  Scottish.

• 2:00:41Speaker 02

  So important. Yeah.

• 2:00:42David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:00:42Speaker 02

  Massively important.

• 2:00:44Speaker 03

  It's insane how both them and Afix Twin have continued to feel so just.

• 2:00:51David Sims?

  Yeah. You don't listen to Afix Twin and feel like, oh yeah, this is the nineties or whatever. It feels like now.

• 2:00:57Speaker 03

  I gotta say, they feel certified fresh.

• 2:01:01David Sims?

  Thank you.

• 2:01:02Speaker 02

  Heard it here first.

• 2:01:03David Sims?

  Red tomato for Afix.

• 2:01:05Griffin Newman?

  Well, there's also the crazy thing of Lonely Island sampling Afix Twin for the Iran so far away thing. In an era where they were like, these are like dumb videos that air on SNL one time.

• 2:01:19David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:01:19Griffin Newman?

  And we're sampling it.

• 2:01:20David Sims?

  License.

• 2:01:20Griffin Newman?

  And it doesn't matter and it never replays. And then they put it on YouTube and it got like eight trillion views and NBC had to pay them so much fucking money.

• 2:01:28David Sims?

  Good days.

• 2:01:29Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:30David Sims?

  Broadcast.

• 2:01:32Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:01:32David Sims?

  Let's give them.

• 2:01:33Speaker 02

  Broadcast stereo lab. Like this is just like the coolest shit. I'm sorry. It was like my music.

• 2:01:39Speaker 03

  So why?

• 2:01:40David Sims?

  Same. Broadcast was such a band for me in high school.

• 2:01:42Speaker 02

  R I P, man.

• 2:01:44David Sims?

  Who's?

• 2:01:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:01:44David Sims?

  Who's doing this? Is it, um, you know, is it Ramsey? Like who's got such a like finger on the pulse taste?

• 2:01:53Speaker 02

  Is, I wouldn't put it bastard because the soundtrack of Die My Love is also fantastic in a totally different way, but like, is there a listing of the tape in the book?

• 2:02:03David Sims?

  Uh, no, I don't.

• 2:02:04Speaker 03

  I feel like there's something.

• 2:02:05David Sims?

  Music is like post the book, like broadcaster.

• 2:02:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's true. That's true.

• 2:02:09David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:09Speaker 02

  So it's just Lynn Ramsey being cool as fuck, which like shocking no one.

• 2:02:13David Sims?

  The vibe I get is that it's her.

• 2:02:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:02:16David Sims?

  She wanted Mamas and the Papas at the end because she wanted the final needle drop to be emotional in the way that the, the rest of the soundtrack is not. And to be just a swerve.

• 2:02:27Griffin Newman?

  In the book, Morvern has tapes that are made up already. It's not something he leaves her as a present. That was a new invention. I felt the tape was like a letter to her. The music's great because it's part of the narrative. I saw her boyfriend as Alan Warner, really.

• 2:02:39David Sims?

  Oh, I love that.

• 2:02:40Griffin Newman?

  An intellectual who's also a muso seeing this less academic girl.

• 2:02:43David Sims?

  A muso.

• 2:02:44Speaker 02

  A muso.

• 2:02:46Griffin Newman?

  Early on.

• 2:02:46Speaker 02

  A new one.

• 2:02:47David Sims?

  They have a muso.

• 2:02:48Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, they don't name the tracks in the book. And I used electronic music that was very cinematic and sound design in order to avoid the MTV pop promo feel. That is what's effective about it is that's a very hip soundtrack that also doesn't feel like. And now that's what I call copy.

• 2:03:04David Sims?

  Right, it doesn't feel like a bunch of labels were like, hey, can we get our cool song?

• 2:03:07Griffin Newman?

  No, or even like just pulling the NME chart or whatever.

• 2:03:11David Sims?

  What label is gonna be like, and she does what to the, to the body? Okay, I know you can use absolute any tracks.

• 2:03:16Speaker 03

  And also from a playlist curation standpoint, I love that it also has a mix of older stuff. And eclectic.

• 2:03:21Speaker 02

  Well, that's the thing.

• 2:03:22Speaker 03

  Like Lee Scratch Perry.

• 2:03:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:03:24Speaker 03

  You know Velvet Underground.

• 2:03:25David Sims?

  Now, the two you would make a lot of mixtapes, right?

• 2:03:27Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. Are you kidding?

• 2:03:29David Sims?

  I know. You're, yes, but I'm sure you're, I'm just like.

• 2:03:33Speaker 03

  Was it a mixtape?

• 2:03:34David Sims?

  Coolio songs, your favorite Coolio songs?

• 2:03:36Griffin Newman?

  I threw a track or two on there.

• 2:03:38David Sims?

  I feel like, Griff, you and I also made mixtapes, but maybe they probably curated them in very cool ways. Like, right? Like you guys were probably good at like having your, the energy go up and down.

• 2:03:50Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. And then like in the days of actual tapes before the CD thing, cause that was, there was a couple of years where I was still doing that. You would like, you know, hook up the tape recorder to the TV and do a little movie quote in there in between songs like.

• 2:04:04David Sims?

  This is what I'm talking, this is bespoke tape making.

• 2:04:07Griffin Newman?

  I will say, I have no doubt that Emily and Ben's tapes were cooler. But I was doing that kind of intentionality.

• 2:04:14David Sims?

  Well, so what I want now, I want a Griffin, a teen.

• 2:04:16Griffin Newman?

  I would have to dig in and see if I could find one. But I, I was very into the ordering and cutting things up with skits and fucking other shit.

• 2:04:24David Sims?

  Skits. I would, it wasn't for ordering.

• 2:04:26Griffin Newman?

  I would like get movie quotes from fucking like Kazaa.

• 2:04:30David Sims?

  I would be taping off the radio and I would have like my thing, like I plug my, I guess my aux cord ready to go. Like, and I would hear the song starting to be like, okay, perfect. Like I would do that. I remember that.

• 2:04:41Speaker 02

  I would have a sort of.

• 2:04:42David Sims?

  Pre-burning?

• 2:04:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I would have one, like a tape. It wasn't even a mixtape. It was just like, I have this one ready to go if like a song I like is playing. Playing on the radio and I just like hit record.

• 2:04:50David Sims?

  I also made music video mixtapes. Did you guys do that? Where like I would have a blank tape in my VCR because I fucking watched MTV and shit all day. And then when something I knew I loved was coming up, I would add, had like two tapes of like.

• 2:05:04Speaker 02

  See, I was the person who got those because I never had MTV growing up. So like my friends would take pity on me and be like, here's all the cool shit that's happening on MTV.

• 2:05:11David Sims?

  Right. Like FYI, this is the last year of cool music.

• 2:05:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:05:16David Sims?

  So I would watch, you know, like a Busta Rhymes videos, you know, or whatever, like anything where I was like.

• 2:05:20Griffin Newman?

  Coolio, yeah.

• 2:05:21David Sims?

  Okay, yeah, Coolio, maybe like every single thing Coolio had ever done, like.

• 2:05:25Speaker 03

  Let's try and see if we could dig up maybe one of our mixtapes.

• 2:05:29David Sims?

  I know, that's a good challenge.

• 2:05:31Speaker 03

  Out like the, the, the tracklist.

• 2:05:34Speaker 02

  I, I'm, I'm just, I'm, I must have a listing somewhere. I, I mean, I really had a, I did a lot in high school. Then when I was in college and I was, I did, I did radio at, at, at LMU, at KSLU, eighty eight point nine. I, I got much more into it as like this professional endeavor and I would do my own art for it. I would make, I would make mixes that I would send out to a bunch of people that like had a title and were like a quarterly mix or something.

• 2:06:01David Sims?

  Would you, Griffin, this is for you. Would you get the taste of girls?

• 2:06:08David Sims?

  Genuine, genuine question.

• 2:06:09Griffin Newman?

  No, I was looking through.

• 2:06:10David Sims?

  It's kind of like, you know, you're putting yourself out there.

• 2:06:13Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, there was, I, I, I'm, I'm going through a thing right now of feeling very annoyed at the fucking Apple Corporation.

• 2:06:21David Sims?

  They're no good.

• 2:06:21Griffin Newman?

  Who had this whole like iTunes match feature where it's like, oh, if you take the time to upload something that isn't on the Apple Music server, we'll save it here.

• 2:06:31David Sims?

  You are talking about why I am saying things like, maybe it's time to get back into CDs. Like all of these services have failed us.

• 2:06:39Griffin Newman?

  All of them have failed.

• 2:06:40David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:06:40Griffin Newman?

  I, there was, there was a, a, a big high school crush, long distance on off, a person, a young woman, where we would mail each other CDs with very long.

• 2:06:53David Sims?

  How postal service of you.

• 2:06:55Griffin Newman?

  It was.

• 2:06:55Speaker 02

  Uh, but that's how I first heard of Dentel, like one half of postal. Was on a on a mixed CD sent to me from, he was a senior when I was a freshman and he was like here in New York at school and I would like got cool music sent to me by this like it was yeah it was so fun.

• 2:07:12Griffin Newman?

  This was yeah, we like lived a state apart and we would have like, you know, three hour like Sunday night phone conversations AIM and then like the big love language was the mailing of these CDs and I had them on my phone forever and I'm looking now and iTunes has like gutted them where it has like three out of eighteen tracks left because of just whatever fucking licensing agreements they have.

• 2:07:34Speaker 02

  So I still have a drive. It's basically everything I ever burned like that and you know, got indexed and everything, but like it's on its last legs. Like I get anytime I've plugged it in, I'm like, oh god. Yeah, it's it's it's like this.

• 2:07:47Griffin Newman?

  I lived that way forever and the promise of iTunes match. I fucking fell for it. I fell for it. I fell for their fucking.

• 2:07:55Speaker 02

  I gotta say though, even even now, I have just had another, you know, and it's it's like from it's a lateral move, but I finally was like, I just can't, I can't. And this is a big move for me. I had to get off of Spotify. Like I just could no longer in a good conscience be on Spotify, but like my life was on Spotify for like basically from the day they started, I had like a premium membership. I had so many playlists.

• 2:08:18David Sims?

  I make a playlist every month and I've been doing it for so long and it's like almost a journal of my life.

• 2:08:24Speaker 02

  Me too.

• 2:08:25David Sims?

  I can't, I can't give it up.

• 2:08:27Speaker 02

  But I did the shift. They have a thing called song shift and it's okay, but I shifted everything to Apple Music, I guess, because it was like the other one.

• 2:08:35David Sims?

  My problem. I made that move and then I just started to get annoyed with Apple Music. So now I'm withdrawing. I downloaded something called Doppler. I'm creating an iPod back on my iPhone. And that's right. And so those day corporations don't have their grips on me at all.

• 2:08:49Griffin Newman?

  Sucks. I was like methodically buying CDs through like 2012 and like importing them and then choosing like the best high quality version, the cover and everything. And I was just like, it's all saved here and then there's a backup and then I got rid of the backup and then it's fucking cloud.

• 2:09:07Speaker 02

  You want to hear about a really sad like going to amoeba music? On Sunset Boulevard. Well, it doesn't exist there anymore. I mean, it exists, but it's not the same.

• 2:09:17David Sims?

  There's the main one still in San Francisco exists, right?

• 2:09:20Speaker 02

  I think the Berkeley one, yeah. But going there, loading up like a stack this high of CDs that cost between like five and six dollars a piece, burning them all, like ripping them all and like you would like it came out to like 20 cents a song. And it's like, that's sustainable as like a college student who like, you know, was constantly broke. That was still sustainable compared and like everybody, like, I feel like we all do Spotify and shit now. Cause it's like, oh, 1099 a month, you can have like the entire music catalog. But it's like, no, it doesn't, it doesn't.

• 2:09:50Griffin Newman?

  By the way, we're buying you CDs at amoeba. The musicians have already made their money.

• 2:09:54David Sims?

  But it's just also just that, I mean, whatever. Now we are, we're, we're getting, it's Andy Rooney ifying in here, but the vibe of like you would, I would go to the record store. I've definitely done this rant before. I would have enough money for like one to two CDs, right? And so like, I would take forever on my choices. And then the choices I made, I had to listen to them to death because I was like, I spent the money. Like, I'm not just like putting these on a shelf and I'll get to it.

• 2:10:21Griffin Newman?

  No, you're like, there's three weeks of this being

• 2:10:23David Sims?

  Yeah, this is the choice.

• 2:10:24Griffin Newman?

  The one CD I'm bringing with me in a Discman every day. You, you know, the album backwards and forwards. I might like semester and change of catalogs was defined by convincing a friend to drive me to a movie. I wanted to see at the ArcLight and then going to amoeba for like an hour afterward.

• 2:10:41Speaker 02

  Oh my God, yeah. That was the great one too. Like I, I, for my first couple of years, I was at Loyola. So I was like clear on the other end of town. So yeah, I was like going to Hollywood was like, I think I did it on the weekend. And it was like, those were the spots. It's like Fred 62, ArcLight and.

• 2:10:58Griffin Newman?

  Well, even beyond that, like even when I stopped sending mixes to people and I was never on Spotify. I was just like pa committed to the fucking Apple corporation. But I used to like make a playlist for every year of my life to be like, I can look back on this. And this will be the 12 tracks that like evokes the feelings of what I went through that year. Whether they're like songs linked to specific events. Or moments or people or it's just what I was into or discovered. It was less like songs that came out that year and more just like what was in my rotation. And at some point, I just fucking stopped doing that. I never listened to music. So it's a goddamn podcast.

• 2:11:34Speaker 02

  Well, I think like, I, I think a loss are in addition to making the mix is to be, is, is the interpretation of mixes that are made for you. And like reading all sorts of shit into it that you want to be there. But to steer us back on topic a little bit.

• 2:11:48David Sims?

  Let's, let's, let's go back to more of a color.

• 2:11:50Speaker 02

  James's mix for Morvern, I think, is a more interesting suicide note than the one he actually leaves.

• 2:11:59David Sims?

  If this is what it is, absolutely.

• 2:12:01Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, who wrote a whole book that she doesn't even read.

• 2:12:04David Sims?

  And if it truly ends on, uh, dedicated to the one I love.

• 2:12:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:12:08David Sims?

  Which is a great ending for a like, yeah.

• 2:12:10Speaker 02

  Heart ripping.

• 2:12:11Griffin Newman?

  Like for a guy who's trying to express himself, this feels like the words that he can't say, which is also very twinned with like Lynn Ramsey's. Yeah. Approach to storytelling, which is like, these people can't say these things themselves. These things like are bigger than words.

• 2:12:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it's clear that that is a language that they actually did share. Like he leaves her his music and that's what she packs up. Like that is the priority. When she finally leaves the apartment, she takes all of his record collection with her. And it's like, that more so than his pursuit of writing seems to be the thing that like they connected with on some sort of spiritual level.

• 2:12:43Griffin Newman?

  Keep the music is like his ultimate, I love you.

• 2:12:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:12:46Griffin Newman?

  More than saying, I love you.

• 2:12:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:12:47Griffin Newman?

  And I'm sorry.

• 2:12:48David Sims?

  We don't really know, right? What Morvern's interests are or whatever. She is, she's so opaque, right? Like it's hard to, hard to understand what like, you know.

• 2:12:58Griffin Newman?

  Well, her bluff with Dolly Wells of like, isn't that what's great about being a writer that you can kind of piss off? It doesn't feel like her trying to imagine what a writer would say. It's her testing out this life for herself.

• 2:13:10David Sims?

  Right. Totally.

• 2:13:11Griffin Newman?

  She's like, if people buy that I'm a writer and they give me a bunch of money, then what do I do? I sit around all day and I smoke and I go like, I'm coming up with something.

• 2:13:18David Sims?

  21 or whatever. I mean, it's like, it's not like more of her needs a direction in life, like.

• 2:13:22Griffin Newman?

  No, but I think she wants to not, right?

• 2:13:26Griffin Newman?

  Do you know what I'm saying? Like, I think her dream is just to like float.

• 2:13:29David Sims?

  Sure.

• 2:13:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:13:30David Sims?

  At least for now. But she is disassociating.

• 2:13:31Speaker 02

  Well, this is the thing, though, about like, I don't know. I always am turning this over in my head when I watch this movie. Because it's like, she talks about she likes the ants. And like, she is, I don't know. I think it's kind of funny watching this so close back to back with Die My Love, which has a lot of very physical performance, very, and like, very external performance of like boredom. Or like, I keep using the word torpor, but like, I feel like that's what she's really, really good at expressing. And like Jennifer Lawrence is doing that in that film as well. But it's like, here, like, there's sort of the built in excuse of everybody's on ecstasy all the time. So you can kind of like, you know, be feeling the branches of the trees all the time. There's like, an excuse for that. But like, I don't know.

• 2:14:15Speaker 02

  But it still feels like what we're picking up is that there is some kind of internal poetry in Morvern Callar, even if it is not this studied kind of thing that her boyfriend was into. Like, she is, she wants something. She, there is a lyricism. There is like an artist's spirit in her somewhere. It just doesn't express itself in the way that like, you know, is typically legible. And like, you can imagine if she is ever called upon to like, make a second book, it's probably not going to go so well. But that doesn't mean that she doesn't, she's not in some way tuned in.

• 2:14:47Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:14:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. Or like, an emotion, living an emotional lyrical life in some way or another.

• 2:14:52Griffin Newman?

  I also think it's fascinating in the, in the meeting with the book publishers. I mean, they're like, hitting it off. They're like, loving her. They're buttering her up. They're offering her the money. And then you cut to like, the sun has set and they're still drinking, right? This has gone beyond business deal. She's seemingly already literally signed the contract. And yet they're here still talking. And she mentions the supermarket thing. And they're like, oh, my God, supermarket novel. That's unbelievable. Hilarious. It sells itself. We got to get a picture. And she holds like champagne glass up to her face. And she almost looks embarrassed in that moment. And I don't read it as a, oh, fuck.

• 2:15:31Griffin Newman?

  If I get attention, does that like, does the spotlight on me increase the possibility of being revealed to be a sham? I think it's more that like, the attention isn't really what she fucking wants. This is like, means to an end to buy an idea of freedom. But What you're saying of there is some internal poetry in her, but she doesn't seem to have any need to have that validated by the outside world, even her closest friends.

• 2:15:58Speaker 02

  But it's even still, it's like the, she is experiencing being perceived perhaps in a way that she never has been before. Maybe it's because of like false auspices or whatever. But like the idea that somebody would look at her and say, or project this idea that she has depth, that there's, um, that there's something really interesting there. Like I, I feel like what, cause I know exactly the moment you're talking about. And that's what I read from it is like, is like, oh my God, somebody thinks I'm like, I'm sure that her boyfriend loved her, but I'm sure her boyfriend was like, oh, this is my working class girlfriend or whatever. And like, and like now she's having these eyes on her, thinking of her as being somebody who like, wow, she's full of ideas and feeling and depth and all these things. And it must be like, yeah, it's, it's just an interesting suit to put on, I think.

• 2:16:44Griffin Newman?

  Well, yeah. And in her like the Lynn Ramsey canon of outsider, she's the only outsider who is like given a path to the inside. And the fact that the movie ends before we see any of the results of that, all we know is that the door has been opened for her. Creates like really, really interesting ambiguity of like, what the fuck happens to this person? You know?

• 2:17:07Speaker 02

  And there's always Sasha who got left in reverb and lived off oranges and juice and burgers.

• 2:17:15Speaker 02

  Like I truly think that's her future, but maybe that's the darkest reading possible. But I just like, cause I do think she goes back to the club, both spiritually and, and literally at the end.

• 2:17:25Griffin Newman?

  Right, right, right.

• 2:17:27Speaker 02

  Um, and, and just, you know, becomes like Sasha. He's a laugh.

• 2:17:32Griffin Newman?

  But I also, yes, I think there's the larger, like the indescribable desire to escape oneself, right? My favorite fucking SNL sketch of the last 10 years, which I cite all the time is the Adam Sandler, uh, Romano Italy tours one.

• 2:17:50David Sims?

  I fucking love that sketch where he's like, we will take you to a nice place. You will eat good food that will not make you a better, a different person. If you're sad where you are now, you will be sad there.

• 2:18:04Griffin Newman?

  It is one of the greatest, like genuinely, pieces of art about depression I have ever seen. It is one minute of slow burn where he's just straight up naming the sites and the experiences. And then he goes, but I must restate, you will still be the same person you are at home, just in a nicer location.

• 2:18:22Speaker 02

  So funny. I love that.

• 2:18:25Griffin Newman?

  And he's like, you know, sort of like, we can give you activities to do with your wife. We can't help you know how to talk to each other, like that kind of stuff. And there's this degree of like, if I'm perceived as a novelist, does that make me a different person? If I have money, does that make me a different person? If I go to a different place, if I take different drugs, if I'm with different people. And the thing she can't escape is like, actually her in her life. The thing that Lynn Ramsey knows how to bring like about cinematically better than anyone else is just like her headspace.

• 2:18:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. No, I mean, I think it's really interesting. Like her last conversation with, with Lana is like, you know, when she's saying she's gonna leave again, ask her to go with her and you should, my whole life is here. And it's like, there's the same crappiness everywhere, so stop dreaming. And it's like, I always think like, I will always remember. I hope my mom's, my mom's not listening to me. I went to this music, I went to this music festival and, or not music festival. It was, it was the Matador Records 21st birthday party in Vegas and in 2010. And I had, you know, I had my equivalent of this in Vegas with like my, the Lana of my life. And, and, you know, had this mountain top experience seeing like Guided by Voices

• 2:19:43Speaker 02

  and all these fucking bands and stuff. And then got back to, I was living with my mom in Seattle at the time, or outside of Seattle. And Guided by Voices was on tour and they were gonna be playing in Seattle like the next weekend. And I was like, I think I'm gonna go. And my mom was just like, you can't just do what you want all the time. Like otherwise you will become a hedonist.

• 2:20:05David Sims?

  But even like, you might be a bad one though. I mean, cause it's like, she is something of a hedonist in that she. She clubs, she has sex, she takes drugs, but like, there's no real sign of pleasure.

• 2:20:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, but she's also searching, like, the way, like Lana, you could say Lana does the same thing, but Lana is also very much.

• 2:20:23David Sims?

  Lana has a good time.

• 2:20:24Speaker 02

  Lana has, yeah, she has a good time and she also has like a community and it might, but it's like absolutely not what Morgan wants in her life at all.

• 2:20:32David Sims?

  There's a balance.

• 2:20:33Speaker 02

  For something, yeah.

• 2:20:35Griffin Newman?

  In Lana, there's some sort of like, okay, but at some time I gotta like resume real life. I understand I have to like play the game. She has that self enforced, right?

• 2:20:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:20:46Griffin Newman?

  At some point I gotta grow up.

• 2:20:48Speaker 02

  It's holiday for a reason because you've come back from.

• 2:20:51Griffin Newman?

  And then, and then it's Monday, right? Which Morgan is like, how do I destroy Monday?

• 2:20:56Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, it's, she's the original spring breakers. Like, you know, it is what if spring break, but forever.

• 2:21:02David Sims?

  This is a better movie than Spring Breaker.

• 2:21:04Griffin Newman?

  Although that is a great film.

• 2:21:06David Sims?

  Movie intro.

• 2:21:07Griffin Newman?

  It's a great film.

• 2:21:08Speaker 02

  But I do, I would do a total double bill of the, like, I would be a really fun double feature.

• 2:21:11Griffin Newman?

  They pair up, like, absolutely. It was in one of the earlier quotes you read that she literally like talks about Lynn Ramsey hedonism as like this kind of defining cultural shift of like the use of drugs across generations of it being this idea of like counterculture, political statement.

• 2:21:28David Sims?

  She says this, right? The sixties you'd use to.

• 2:21:30Griffin Newman?

  Psychological expansion versus like self punishing, internalized.

• 2:21:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it's not about, you're not really, there's nothing to rebel against.

• 2:21:39David Sims?

  Someone.

• 2:21:40Speaker 02

  There's not.

• 2:21:40David Sims?

  From Warp Records, though.

• 2:21:42Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:21:43David Sims?

  Who saw this film, they screened it early for them, said it was like, this is like a modern day Easy Rider. And I do love that.

• 2:21:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:21:50David Sims?

  Because Easy Rider is the sort of, you know, sixties version of the like, hey, man, let's just tune in, drop out, you know.

• 2:21:55Griffin Newman?

  But that, that feeling of like whatever they were fighting for in the sixties and seventies has settled into something else and everything feels wrong, but it's not really clear what we should be pushing back against. She not a clear target.

• 2:22:07David Sims?

  She thinks she should have pushed to black comedy more, although more recently for a dime I love. She was interviewed and she's like, I rewatch it now. I saw it with an audience, like a young audience and they were laughing and enjoying it. It made me feel good that it like still.

• 2:22:22Speaker 02

  This movie or dime I love?

• 2:22:23David Sims?

  More in color.

• 2:22:24Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 2:22:24David Sims?

  Like she was interviewed like for, you know what I mean?

• 2:22:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:22:26David Sims?

  In right current.

• 2:22:27Griffin Newman?

  A retrospective screening while she was on the dime I love press.

• 2:22:30Speaker 02

  Got it.

• 2:22:30David Sims?

  And she thinks like, oh, you know, I pissed off the financiers. They wanted a different poster. I love the poster. Poster is like incredible poster. Like, you know, they, they kind of dumped it. I'm pissed. I was pissed off about it.

• 2:22:43Griffin Newman?

  But it's a classic Lynn Ramsey thing of like, it got a bad release because they didn't like working with me because I didn't want the shitty poster and it was all worth it because the poster's on my wall and I like it.

• 2:22:53Speaker 02

  And honestly, yes. But I, I mean, yeah, I do think it's probably the funniest movie of her filmography. It's got the most jokes in it and I, I think a lot of that is because it's so in touch with like youthful folly, I guess, which is like the oldest person way to say what I mean. But like, you know, the, the thing with the, the dollar bill out of the pocket, like these sort of just like, you're just sort of figuring out how to scrape through life and it's all, it's all embarrassing. Everything is mortifying for some reason and it's all funny. It's like, it's, it's inherently funny.

• 2:23:29Griffin Newman?

  The, so the film stock change happens when she goes to Spain and, you know, hinges on that cab ride and she said they had to reshoot the cab ride seven times because they couldn't figure out the right way to process the film stock and working with the new material.

• 2:23:46Speaker 02

  Does it, does it change as soon as they get to Spain or is it when they get on the cab and then go to the village?

• 2:23:51Griffin Newman?

  We changed the film stock. I'm sorry. You're right. We changed the film stock for when Morver decides to leave the hotel.

• 2:23:55Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 2:23:55Griffin Newman?

  So it, it starts on the cab ride when they venture outside of the resort.

• 2:23:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:24:00David Sims?

  It's so funny when her friend is like, kind of high on E and is like rushed to leave and doesn't even put her clothes on, but then it's like, what are you looking at pervert?

• 2:24:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's like, I mean, that is the funny shit where it's just like the shamelessness, but also, you know, like, yeah, everything is embarrassing.

• 2:24:18Griffin Newman?

  And there's this very like MTV Spring Break style like party scene where there's a one in there who is just like blotto, right? Who just like is not catatonic because of depression, but is clearly just on 10,000 things. And you keep having the camera like pan across her against like guys like Jirayu.

• 2:24:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then, I mean, there's the swimsuit swap thing on the pool, which is just like that long tape.

• 2:24:42David Sims?

  Push on your face.

• 2:24:43Speaker 02

  It's so good.

• 2:24:44David Sims?

  I also love where you see like across the balcony, like there's two guys on balcony going like, wow. And then there's someone on the big, I'm trying to sleep. And I'm like, why are you trying to sleep?

• 2:24:55Speaker 02

  Why are you here?

• 2:24:56David Sims?

  Go anywhere else.

• 2:24:58Speaker 02

  I know. I feel so bad for all the old people they show in the lobby of that hotel. I'm just like, you are in hell. You should leave right now.

• 2:25:05David Sims?

  It does feel like you could just go down the road.

• 2:25:08Griffin Newman?

  In a movie without a lot of dialogue, the whole kind of like, all of the core themes are talking about are summed up in the exchange in the back of the cab between Marv and Lana, where she goes, where are we going? I don't know, somewhere beautiful. And it's like, it doesn't matter. Like, I don't know, we're gonna find a place that's beautiful. Like, the next place will solve it. The next adventure will like solve it. You know, I just need to keep going forward to the next experience.

• 2:25:31Speaker 02

  Do you think, I see, my understanding is always that when she does that, she leaves with the intention of leaving Lana wherever they go, like from the outset.

• 2:25:41Griffin Newman?

  You think that's planned, like leaving her on the side of the road with the note?

• 2:25:44Speaker 02

  Yes. I don't know. That's, that's always been my understanding of it, which is extreme, but like, I think it's like she makes some decision at some point, but, but it also could be that like the third time that Lana brings up fucking her boyfriend, she's like, okay, fuck this bitch.

• 2:25:59Griffin Newman?

  I think it's like all improvisational. I think it's all like instinctual moment to moment. And I also love that you imagine there's gonna be some like bigger blow up with Lana if they reconvene at the end of the movie. And she's just like, of course, we're all like on spring break. You leave me by the side of the road. I found my way back home.

• 2:26:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:26:16Griffin Newman?

  How much longer were you there?

• 2:26:17Speaker 02

  It's like everybody bounces back. It's like your bones are still soft. Kind of like bounce back from these fights with friends or, or you know, your, your friend can tell you that her boyfriend is dead. And you're like, yeah, stop being so crazy. Like, you know, there's something, I, I was thinking about this in that conversation. There's another part, I wrote it down somewhere in this film that, and there's some of this in Die My Love too, where I think that so much of, like, it's sort of her, Lynn Ramsey's approach to comedy, but it's like, it's also just kind of really good at conveying alienation is like, there's so many frustrated, like, non-responses to things, like, things that should be these peak admissions or revelations or something.

• 2:26:58Speaker 02

  They never get the reaction that you think they should. And there's something that's so frustrating, but I think also very real about that. You rarely ever get those big cathartic moments where you finally tell somebody a secret you've been keeping for so long and they react appropriately.

• 2:27:13Griffin Newman?

  Well, she keeps telling people, like, my boyfriend fucked off. And she wants people to ask follow-up questions.

• 2:27:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, and they never do.

• 2:27:19Griffin Newman?

  And they just go like, yeah, sounds like the kind of thing, you know, he'd do. And then in the bathtub with Lana, there's like the real, like, I gotta tell you. It's a funny subtitle moment, cause it's like translated phonetically into like, something that's bad happened.

• 2:27:36Griffin Newman?

  But she goes like, what? And she was like, he's gone. And Lana like, won't hear her.

• 2:27:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:27:41Griffin Newman?

  Say it.

• 2:27:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:27:43Griffin Newman?

  She, he's gone to another country, the undiscovered country, you know?

• 2:27:46Speaker 02

  Because Lana is just like, fuck, fuck, fuck, it's something you should do with me. Like, you know, everybody is so, you know, narcissistic. Yeah, yeah, that it never, it never comes to that.

• 2:27:56Griffin Newman?

  No one will like, let her confess, which I think helps push her to being like, then why, why do I fucking have to live with guilt or trauma or grief about this?

• 2:28:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:28:05Griffin Newman?

  I was just gonna say the, shooting the cab ride so many times, Lynn Ramsey said that like, the taxi driver was like, one of the highest paid people in the entire movie. Cause they had to keep bringing him back.

• 2:28:15Speaker 02

  My god.

• 2:28:16Griffin Newman?

  When they would like, develop the film and be like, oh, we fucked it up.

• 2:28:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:28:19Griffin Newman?

  And then go back and reshoot it again as they figured out what the visual look was for that final chunk of the film.

• 2:28:24Speaker 02

  That's so wild.

• 2:28:26Griffin Newman?

  And then the sex scene, she had never shot a sex scene before and like, got in. There with them and had all these ideas of like, you know what I don't like in sex scenes? And I'm trying to avoid that.

• 2:28:36Speaker 02

  More crying. Everybody should be crying.

• 2:28:39Griffin Newman?

  Once you actually get in the room, she's just like, it's so awkward to like, figure out and step through. And you find yourself falling into the same ways of shooting it. And she just sent every, like, the whole crowd of the room. And she was just like, it's just us and the camera and just like, try shit. Just try stuff and like, feel it out.

• 2:28:55Speaker 02

  My, oh, my trying shit with that dude.

• 2:28:58Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, handsome guy.

• 2:29:00Speaker 02

  It's, it is a laugh line of its own where he opens the door and it's just like, oh.

• 2:29:05Griffin Newman?

  I lost my mother.

• 2:29:06Speaker 02

  I lost my mother. Okay, let's fuck.

• 2:29:11Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 2:29:12Griffin Newman?

  This premiered at Cannes, but in director's fortnight.

• 2:29:16David Sims?

  I was gonna say, it was gonna be, uh, Rat Catrap in certain regard, this was also put in certain regard. Ramsey was pissed off by that, so she moved it to director's fortnight. She somewhat iconically married Rory Stewart-Kinnear, the guy she co-writes, we need to talk about Kevin Woods later, at Cannes, impromptu, just, I guess, because she was a little sick of being at Cannes.

• 2:29:38David Sims?

  And

• 2:29:38Griffin Newman?

  They had to get out on a boat so they could like, uh, take advantage of maritime law. It had to go far enough. Yes.

• 2:29:46David Sims?

  It did the festival circuit. It gets distributed in the UK by Momentum. It released 2002. America, it got released, uh, December 2002 by a company called Cowboy Pictures.

• 2:29:59Griffin Newman?

  Yes, right.

• 2:30:00David Sims?

  Really know much about them.

• 2:30:02Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:30:03David Sims?

  It got great reviews, um, but made zero money.

• 2:30:10Griffin Newman?

  Can I read this, uh, quote about the wedding? Cause it's really good.

• 2:30:17Griffin Newman?

  So you, you, the, the captain does the ceremony. This is like a thing they offer at Cannes, uh, but you are legally required to be 12 miles out in international water. Not sure we got that far. During the ceremony, we hear screaming coming from an island and think that someone is being murdered. We look over and see a couple of naked ladies and a camera crew making a porno film.

• 2:30:39Speaker 02

  Oh my god.

• 2:30:40David Sims?

  International waters porn.

• 2:30:42Griffin Newman?

  To ring the boat's bell to get them to shut up. It's absurd, straight out of a Fellini film.

• 2:30:47Speaker 02

  That's incredible.

• 2:30:48David Sims?

  That just sounds like what her life is like on a daily basis, and I might enjoy it for a week and then be like, this is a lot. And I think she just, she's chaotic, especially back then.

• 2:30:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:30:59David Sims?

  This film, this is very interesting to me because this film came out Christmas time 2002, Griffin. And I was like, oh, a Christmas box office. Surely we've done this one before. I don't think we've ever done this one before.

• 2:31:09Griffin Newman?

  Uh, is this not Catch Me If You Can?

• 2:31:12David Sims?

  No, it is not.

• 2:31:13Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:31:14David Sims?

  I guess that comes out.

• 2:31:16Griffin Newman?

  The following week.

• 2:31:17David Sims?

  Later.

• 2:31:17Griffin Newman?

  It comes out literally on Christmas.

• 2:31:19David Sims?

  Correct.

• 2:31:19Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:31:19David Sims?

  This is the first weekend of a little film that's a sequel in a fantasy trilogy.

• 2:31:25Griffin Newman?

  It's called The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers?

• 2:31:29David Sims?

  That's right. Never forget.

• 2:31:31Griffin Newman?

  Treebeard.

• 2:31:32David Sims?

  Yeah, he's there. Now, Emily, you like the Lord of the Rings movies.

• 2:31:34Speaker 02

  I do. That's the best one.

• 2:31:36David Sims?

  And that's your favorite, right?

• 2:31:37Speaker 02

  That's the best one.

• 2:31:38Griffin Newman?

  Is that, you'd claim that when we do PJ?

• 2:31:40Speaker 02

  Oh, absolutely. Well, I mean, I already put in my. I put in.

• 2:31:44Griffin Newman?

  Oh, yes, you, you.

• 2:31:45Speaker 02

  But I also would take that one as well.

• 2:31:47David Sims?

  Aragorn throwing open the doors and going like this.

• 2:31:51Speaker 02

  Gone door calls for aid. Wait, no, that's, that's Return of the King.

• 2:31:54David Sims?

  That's true.

• 2:31:55Griffin Newman?

  You like putting on a pair of PJs.

• 2:31:56Speaker 02

  The Last March of the Ents.

• 2:31:59David Sims?

  That's fun.

• 2:32:00Speaker 02

  Some may say we march to our doom.

• 2:32:02David Sims?

  I like that one ent who kind of like puts his head in the water.

• 2:32:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, and douses it.

• 2:32:07David Sims?

  Cause it's on fire, like that guy.

• 2:32:10Griffin Newman?

  All about the Ents in that movie.

• 2:32:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, anytime I re-watch that and I, the ent sequence comes up where they start, I just start bawling. It's like, it gets worse every time, like with age. The Ents make me cry. I think I'm just like growing up into being an ent eventually, and I just see my future in front of me.

• 2:32:26Griffin Newman?

  Treebeard hasn't really worked recently. What's the last movie?

• 2:32:29David Sims?

  I heard he was on the Epstein list.

• 2:32:31Griffin Newman?

  Oh, really?

• 2:32:32David Sims?

  Don't even. I'm joking.

• 2:32:35Griffin Newman?

  Also, it seems like he did 17 seasons of NCIS Miami.

• 2:32:39David Sims?

  Yeah, he's right.

• 2:32:40Griffin Newman?

  He's the chief.

• 2:32:41David Sims?

  Um, no, he's great. We love Treebeard.

• 2:32:44Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, he's in the.

• 2:32:46David Sims?

  Never cups.

• 2:32:48Speaker 02

  Clearly, he's still thinking about what his next film is gonna be.

• 2:32:51David Sims?

  Right. He's indecisive. You know, Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers is opening to $102 million, uh, which is very good.

• 2:32:59Griffin Newman?

  Wow.

• 2:32:59David Sims?

  In like a five day, I think.

• 2:33:01Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:01David Sims?

  At least, but still.

• 2:33:02Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, yeah, that makes more sense.

• 2:33:03David Sims?

  Pretty hefty.

• 2:33:04Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, was quite a big hit.

• 2:33:06David Sims?

  Um, number two at the box office is a film that I very much enjoy, a romantic comedy.

• 2:33:12Griffin Newman?

  It's not Gangs of New York, it's Kate and Leopold.

• 2:33:14David Sims?

  Incorrect. Gangs of New York, however, is number four. We'll get to that.

• 2:33:18Griffin Newman?

  It's not Kate and Leopold?

• 2:33:19David Sims?

  No, it is not.

• 2:33:20Griffin Newman?

  Oh, cuz that's oh, one?

• 2:33:21David Sims?

  I don't know.

• 2:33:22Griffin Newman?

  Well, David, you don't gotta give me that attitude. Then is it two weeks' notice?

• 2:33:26David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:27Griffin Newman?

  They're the two you always cite.

• 2:33:28David Sims?

  I love two weeks' notice. Mark Lawrence's Two Weeks' Notice with Hugh Grant and Sandra Bullock and Donald Trump, unfortunately, is in that movie.

• 2:33:36Griffin Newman?

  Was also quietly.

• 2:33:37David Sims?

  Hugh Grant says the word.

• 2:33:38Griffin Newman?

  Hmm.

• 2:33:39David Sims?

  Pokemon.

• 2:33:39Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:33:40David Sims?

  Beautifully.

• 2:33:41Griffin Newman?

  Uh, also quietly quite a big hit.

• 2:33:42David Sims?

  Huge hit.

• 2:33:43Griffin Newman?

  Made like 90 domestic.

• 2:33:44David Sims?

  $200 million worldwide.

• 2:33:46Griffin Newman?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:33:46David Sims?

  That movie is, I really recommend, I really think that is the height of Sandy, uh, rom coms. I think it's a really, really funny movie. Uh, and Hugh's obviously very, you know, doing his thing very well.

• 2:33:55Griffin Newman?

  I was going in a Simpsons hole last night and I rewatched, uh, Fish Called Selma.

• 2:34:01David Sims?

  Sure.

• 2:34:01Griffin Newman?

  Incredible episode, but there's the moment where the Jeff Goldblum agent calls Troy McClure and is like, and, uh, you got an offer for a buddy comedy with Christian Slater and Hugh Grant, and he goes, those degenerates.

• 2:34:12David Sims?

  Funny.

• 2:34:13Griffin Newman?

  It's a very funny snapshot. It's Christian Slater, Rob Lowe and Hugh Grant. Yeah, anyway.

• 2:34:18David Sims?

  Number three, the box office is a less successful rom com, in my opinion.

• 2:34:22Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:34:22David Sims?

  Uh, uh, falling from number one.

• 2:34:25Griffin Newman?

  Hmm. It's also set in Manhattan.

• 2:34:27David Sims?

  It's made in Manhattan.

• 2:34:28Griffin Newman?

  Also, quite a big hit.

• 2:34:31David Sims?

  Yeah, big hit. Not, not, yeah, no slouch.

• 2:34:33Griffin Newman?

  A robust December.

• 2:34:35David Sims?

  Uh, do you like Made in Manhattan?

• 2:34:37Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, the thing I always remember about that is like when I first moved to LA, I knew somebody who had worked on the crew in Made in Manhattan. I was like, wow, I really know some like people who are

• 2:34:47Griffin Newman?

  Glit.

• 2:34:47Speaker 02

  Showbiz.

• 2:34:48Griffin Newman?

  Glamour. That's also like one of the most quietly stacked cast movies.

• 2:34:53David Sims?

  Sure. Give it, hit me. I mean, after Ralph Fiennes.

• 2:34:56Griffin Newman?

  Bob Hoskins.

• 2:34:57David Sims?

  Hoskins is there.

• 2:34:58Griffin Newman?

  Uh.

• 2:34:59David Sims?

  She's there.

• 2:34:59Griffin Newman?

  Two cheese there. Chris Iguemen is in it.

• 2:35:02David Sims?

  He sure is.

• 2:35:03Griffin Newman?

  Um.

• 2:35:03David Sims?

  Francis Conroy.

• 2:35:04Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:35:04David Sims?

  Natasha Richardson.

• 2:35:05Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:35:06David Sims?

  That's about it.

• 2:35:07Griffin Newman?

  Okay, well.

• 2:35:08David Sims?

  No, Amy Sedaris.

• 2:35:09Griffin Newman?

  Well, well, well.

• 2:35:10David Sims?

  Funny. I've seen the film. Don't really remember it. Number four at the box office opening new this week. You guessed it, Griffin. The disappointing opening of Gangs of New York.

• 2:35:18Griffin Newman?

  There we go.

• 2:35:18David Sims?

  Which was much hyped and opened to only 9.4 million dollars. Uh, it did stretch all the way to 70 cent.

• 2:35:25Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:35:25David Sims?

  Domestic.

• 2:35:26Griffin Newman?

  And it cost like what?

• 2:35:27David Sims?

  Correct.

• 2:35:28Speaker 02

  How much it costs like?

• 2:35:30David Sims?

  I think it costs like about a hundred million dollars.

• 2:35:32Speaker 02

  Okay, okay.

• 2:35:33David Sims?

  I mean, but like at the time that was a lot and obviously it's like a close to three hour, very violent epic. Like I, I adore that movie so much. I love the Mr. Scorsese stuff on it so much.

• 2:35:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's good. Yeah.

• 2:35:45David Sims?

  That he does not really want to talk shit about it. It is mostly like, I'm mostly happy.

• 2:35:49Speaker 02

  No, the part where he's like, I'm, I had to like convince myself to stop thinking about it. And I was like, oof.

• 2:35:54David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:35:55Speaker 02

  I can't even imagine.

• 2:35:56Griffin Newman?

  Mr. Scorsese is great. I wish it was a year long.

• 2:35:59David Sims?

  I agree. I wish it had done with so much more.

• 2:36:01Griffin Newman?

  Four episodes per movie.

• 2:36:03David Sims?

  But it's really well done.

• 2:36:04Griffin Newman?

  It is. It is. But it is interesting. There's always been this question of like, especially now that Harvey Weinstein is so thoroughly out of the picture. Harvey Weinstein, uh, that like, does Marty not want to go back and like recut Gangs of New York? Cause there was infamously so much interference there. And his thing has always been like, you can't rewrite the narrative of a movie.

• 2:36:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:36:24Griffin Newman?

  The movie that comes out is the movie that culture meets. I don't want to revisit my work.

• 2:36:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I somehow feel like, you know, if it's your, possibly your last project you're working on, maybe you would rather make another movie instead of, but that's how it came off to me is that he was just like, gotta force myself to move on.

• 2:36:40Griffin Newman?

  It also has always felt, yes, that beyond that, that even like in the immediate aftermath, he was just like, I, I spent 20 years of my life tilting at this windmill. I'm proud of enough of it. That I can't keep obsessing over trying to get this perfect.

• 2:36:54David Sims?

  Movie rocks. I've seen it so many times.

• 2:36:56Griffin Newman?

  It's an okay film with incredible stuff.

• 2:36:59David Sims?

  Huge masterpiece. Completely rocks. Uh, number five at the box office is a sort of a counter programming solid hit for teens. Uh, it's been out for two weeks. It makes $56 million domestically and an additional $713 internationally.

• 2:37:16Griffin Newman?

  Is it not another teen movie?

• 2:37:18David Sims?

  No. Oh, when you, when you hear about that disparity, what does that suggest you about the lead of the film?

• 2:37:23Griffin Newman?

  Primarily a film with a African American cast and it's, it's young.

• 2:37:27David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:37:29Speaker 02

  It's one of my favorite movies of all time.

• 2:37:30Griffin Newman?

  You want to say it?

• 2:37:33Speaker 02

  Drumline.

• 2:37:34David Sims?

  Nick Cannon in Drumline.

• 2:37:36Speaker 02

  Oh, what a perfect movie.

• 2:37:38David Sims?

  I have not seen since 2002, but I remember being.

• 2:37:41Speaker 02

  Oh, I've watched.

• 2:37:42Griffin Newman?

  Quite good.

• 2:37:43Speaker 02

  A few times.

• 2:37:43David Sims?

  Number six at the box office, making only $3 million less than the opening weekend of Gangs of New York, is the opening weekend of the Wild Thornberrys movie.

• 2:37:52Griffin Newman?

  Here's a box office stat I love. I think it, when box office mojo still stood tall and there was the chart for David saluting Red Hulk.

• 2:38:03David Sims?

  Maybe he'll bring it back.

• 2:38:04Griffin Newman?

  There was the chart for, uh, lowest second weekend drops of all time. For a long time, Wild Thornberrys held the record because it went up.

• 2:38:14David Sims?

  It goes up.

• 2:38:14Griffin Newman?

  A historic amount.

• 2:38:15David Sims?

  22%.

• 2:38:16Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 2:38:17Griffin Newman?

  Kind of a soft opening and then the families just waited. They waited for school to be out.

• 2:38:21David Sims?

  Totally, totally.

• 2:38:22Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 2:38:23Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. So it like did okay, but the second weekend jump was crazy.

• 2:38:27David Sims?

  Uh, number six is, well, there was number seven, of course, is The Hot Chick.

• 2:38:32Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 2:38:33David Sims?

  Uh, number eight, we covered it recently on this podcast is The Underwhelming Star Trek Nemesis. Number nine is the somewhat underwhelming Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

• 2:38:41Griffin Newman?

  And Star Trek Nemesis dropping hard. It was number two the week before.

• 2:38:45David Sims?

  Yeah, it dropped 76%.

• 2:38:46Speaker 02

  I saw like every single one of these movies except for Wild Thornberrys.

• 2:38:49Griffin Newman?

  That's like a real.

• 2:38:50David Sims?

  Same. And number 10, Die Another Day, uh, which has been out for a couple of months.

• 2:38:55Griffin Newman?

  And we've also covered on our Patreon.

• 2:38:56David Sims?

  Yep. So, you know, things are going well at the box office. Morvern is. Obviously a little lower on this list, opening number 56.

• 2:39:04Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:39:05David Sims?

  Uh, but you know, three screens, 4,000 screen average. Okay. So not amazing.

• 2:39:09Griffin Newman?

  It did feel like.

• 2:39:10David Sims?

  It didn't. It made less than a million dollars worldwide.

• 2:39:12Griffin Newman?

  It felt like there was a feeling of, uh, Morton having an outside chance for supporting actress this year for Minority Report. I feel like she wasn't getting precursor.

• 2:39:22David Sims?

  I agree with you.

• 2:39:23Griffin Newman?

  Being on the bubble list.

• 2:39:24David Sims?

  She was on a bubble list, but yeah, you're, I mean, like no significant awards for it.

• 2:39:29Griffin Newman?

  And she hasn't been nominated since in America, but I feel like Control and The Messenger were both similarly bubble performances where she got on precursor.

• 2:39:36David Sims?

  She's, she's good. I think her, her biggest performance post that boom is Longford, where she got, uh, an Emmy nomination, which is a TV movie, which she's fantastic in, playing Myra Hindley of Serial Killer. Uh, and you know, she's what? She's in The Messenger.

• 2:39:53Griffin Newman?

  I said, right.

• 2:39:54David Sims?

  She's all right in that. Yeah.

• 2:39:55Griffin Newman?

  She's really good in that. Control, she's really good in.

• 2:39:57David Sims?

  Sure.

• 2:39:58Griffin Newman?

  You don't like that movie?

• 2:40:00David Sims?

  Um, I have mixed feelings about that movie.

• 2:40:03Griffin Newman?

  I love that movie. I think she's really good in that.

• 2:40:05David Sims?

  What else does she kind of pop in? She's in Cosmopolis. I can't say I really remember that. Uh, Signet Key, we shouted out. She recently did that, uh, TV show, The Serpent Queen, um, which she was the lead of, which about, um, Catherine de Medici that I think was supposed to be kind of cool.

• 2:40:23Griffin Newman?

  And she did Harlots, an early, uh, Hulu, uh, British co-production. Yeah.

• 2:40:28David Sims?

  Uh, and she is in Anonyme, uh, which is not a film I liked, but she's totally fine in it, uh, playing the character's mom. And, uh, yeah, she's, it's, she's still working, but yeah, she's, you know, it's a different kind of vibe, uh, than what you might've expected. But then like, this is one of the best movies of the 2000s, but I don't watch it going Samantha Morton is about to be a Hollywood movie star. I watch it going like what an interesting actor she is, and I hope she continues to do interesting stuff.

• 2:40:55Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 2:40:56David Sims?

  Which she kind of did.

• 2:40:57Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, she did. Yeah. But you agree with what I'm saying of there was that feeling of that wave of UK actresses? And then I'll add Cate Blanchett into the pot in the late 90s and the early 2000s. Where was the feeling of like, is one of these Meryl Streep? Is this the start of the next Meryl Streep and which one is it?

• 2:41:16Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:41:16Griffin Newman?

  And it does feel like Cate Blanchett won that race, at least in terms of

• 2:41:20Speaker 03

  Took her a while, but yeah.

• 2:41:21Griffin Newman?

  Duration, right?

• 2:41:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:41:23Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, she was in there. Emily? Thank you so much.

• 2:41:27Speaker 03

  Anything else, Emily? You wish to shout out?

• 2:41:30Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, I, um, I don't know. It's funny, like this is, like I said, it's one, it's a very, very special movie to me. And I never, I realized also going in, I don't think I ever wrote anything about it.

• 2:41:41Speaker 03

  Why would you, I guess, like the anniversary, maybe?

• 2:41:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, but no, it's still like not on anybody's radar. So I don't know. I feel, uh, I feel, I feel very glad to get to finally talk about it with somebody. Yeah, yeah.

• 2:41:53Griffin Newman?

  You jotted down notes while we were watching the movie on my Fargo replica notepad.

• 2:41:57Speaker 02

  I know you'll see, you'll have to rub out it to see what I wrote.

• 2:42:00Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:42:00Speaker 02

  It's just, yeah.

• 2:42:02Griffin Newman?

  A picture, it's a Draky Treehorn drawing of a guy's dick being bitten?

• 2:42:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, yeah, it's the guy from the hotel room.

• 2:42:08Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:42:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I set this off mic and I just want to make sure I get this on the record. This movie really made me miss being young, tripping on LSD.

• 2:42:20Speaker 03

  So badly, because old tripping just don't hit the same.

• 2:42:25Griffin Newman?

  When you're old and tripping, it's because your fucking shoelaces run tight. You know what I'm saying?

• 2:42:29Speaker 03

  You said it.

• 2:42:30Griffin Newman?

  The walker gives out.

• 2:42:31Speaker 03

  You said it, boss.

• 2:42:32Griffin Newman?

  You know what I'm saying? It's very different. It's a different animal.

• 2:42:36Speaker 03

  That was so solid.

• 2:42:37Griffin Newman?

  Thank you, thank you so much.

• 2:42:38Speaker 03

  And we also should just say, if you're struggling with depression out there, uh, if you're having, you know, thoughts about hurting yourself, contact somebody. There's 800 numbers, reach out to a family member or friend.

• 2:42:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, look, these are going to be more emotionally intense episodes.

• 2:42:55Speaker 02

  Oh, Lord.

• 2:42:56Griffin Newman?

  For this run, I feel like we will try to

• 2:42:58Speaker 02

  Every single one is a trigger warning, I would say.

• 2:43:00Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:43:01Speaker 02

  And the whole filmography.

• 2:43:03Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:43:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, but thank you.

• 2:43:07Griffin Newman?

  And thank you for being here.

• 2:43:09Speaker 02

  I wish I had something to plug, but everything that I'm working on won't come out until we're all like in our 50s.

• 2:43:14David Sims?

  Shogun will arrive on our screen.

• 2:43:16Griffin Newman?

  Shogun, season two is about to start filming. People will be happy to hear it.

• 2:43:20Speaker 02

  I think it will be filming whenever this comes out.

• 2:43:22David Sims?

  Right. And if you haven't watched season one, it's there for you on Hulu and it is incredible. And Emily's episodes are incredible.

• 2:43:29Griffin Newman?

  You can also plug the mortal engines, the abstract idea of them.

• 2:43:33Speaker 02

  They are meenges and.

• 2:43:36David Sims?

  They're always there. I mean, they're actually not there. But they're always there.

• 2:43:40Speaker 02

  They're immortal, so they're not always there. They're not gonna be there.

• 2:43:44Griffin Newman?

  That's part of the tension.

• 2:43:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. Tension, that's what we like.

• 2:43:47Speaker 03

  It's London.

• 2:43:50Griffin Newman?

  Tune in next week to hear us talk about we need to talk about Kevin.

• 2:43:53David Sims?

  That's right.

• 2:43:53Griffin Newman?

  We need to do it.

• 2:43:54David Sims?

  We gotta do it.

• 2:43:55Griffin Newman?

  It's on the schedule. We need to talk about, we need to talk about Kevin. And as always.

• 2:43:58Speaker 03

  Wait, hold on.

• 2:43:59Griffin Newman?

  Oh.

• 2:44:00Speaker 03

  Over on Patreon, we recently did an episode covering 28 years later, the bone temple.

• 2:44:07David Sims?

  Oh, can't wait to see them bone.

• 2:44:09Speaker 03

  We've heard, excited.

• 2:44:10Griffin Newman?

  Good, thanks.

• 2:44:11Speaker 03

  I can't wait to enter.

• 2:44:13David Sims?

  I hear it's good.

• 2:44:14Speaker 02

  That's the, that's the Patreon franchise, so.

• 2:44:16David Sims?

  No, we're just doing that because we've done all the other 28.

• 2:44:20Speaker 02

  Okay, you're catching up.

• 2:44:21Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:44:21David Sims?

  And you might as well.

• 2:44:22Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:44:23Speaker 03

  You become a member at patreon.com slash blank check.

• 2:44:26David Sims?

  Please do.

• 2:44:26Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, and we're also doing the, uh, the Oz movies.

• 2:44:29Speaker 03

  Correct, we're in the middle of our Oz commentary series.

• 2:44:32Griffin Newman?

  It's a funny contrast to do Lynn Ramsey and Oz at the same time.

• 2:44:35David Sims?

  I think it's good.

• 2:44:36Griffin Newman?

  It's good. It's good. It's good. It's good. What we're doing here is good and important. Uh, tune in next week for Kevin. Well, now it's like hard to figure out like a good upbeat note to end on. I know we were trying to dig ourselves out of this hole. Maybe we just dig the hole deeper and put some G's in there.

• 2:44:51Speaker 03

  Oh, I'll let David sing. Prayer for you, my babe.

• 2:44:55David Sims?

  It's the best.

• 2:44:57Speaker 02

  Cheeseburgers and orange juice in the club.