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Under The Skin with Gregg Hale & Eduardo Sanchez
188 Plays7 months ago
You might be forgiven for thinking that us saying we had two of the horror genre's most distinguished filmmakers on the show would be an April Fool's joke, but you should know by now we never, ever joke about our guests (except for RJ Barker, who will forever be known as the Goth King of Leeds). Today we're joined by Gregg Hale and Eduardo Sanchez, who burst onto the moviemaking scene in 1999 with one of the most audacious, innovative and greatest horror movies of all time, The Blair Witch Project.
Gregg and Ed have chosen to talk about one of their favourite movies, Jonathan Glazer's 2013 science-fiction horror sleeper Under The Skin. It stars Scarlett Johansson as a mysterious visitor to Earth who inhabits the body of a beautiful young woman, who then drives around Glasgow in a ratty old white van looking for young men to seduce and prey upon. The movie flopped upon release but quickly won a reputation for being one of the great arthouse science-fiction films of this century.
We discuss the difference between male and female predation (and the excessive/ monstrous versions of the male and female), chaos versus order, the strange similarities with Snow White, the black goo, and ask who exactly is the bloke on the motorcycle? Plus, Gregg and Ed give their admiration and opinions on how Glazer made such a great-looking film on a shoestring budget, something they know quite a bit about.
Elsewhere, Lieutenant Bungalow visits Earth to investigate ghosts. Or was it phantoms? Or was it John Jarrold? It's definitely something to do with spooky goings on in forests...
Join us next time for the second part to the interview, where we discuss Gregg and Ed's forthcoming epic multimedia fantasy project Emerald Anvil, consisting of a novel, an audio drama, a video game and even NFT artwork, and they'll be talking to us about their plans for the 25th Anniversary of The Blair Witch Project.
Find out more at https://emeraldanvil.com/
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Transcript
Introduction to Crohn's Cast and 'Under the Skin'
00:00:14
Speaker
Hello and welcome along to Crohn's Cast, the fantasy science fiction and horror podcast. I'm Dan Jones. And I'm Christopher Bean. Today we're discussing a modern science fiction horror masterpiece, the 2013 Jonathan Glaser movie Under the Skin. It stars Scarlett Johansson as a mysterious visitor to Earth who inhabits the body of a beautiful young woman who then drives around Glasgow in a ratty old white van looking for young men to seduce and prey upon.
00:00:41
Speaker
Flipping the idea of predatory sexuality on his head, we follow Johansson as she stalks, talks, and, using her beauty, seduces a series of young men before leading them to a grisly end. Using audacious filmmaking techniques on a limited budget with minimal dialogue and featuring a tour de force performance from Johansson, Glazer creates a disturbing vision of predation and vulnerability that's anything but skin deep. The movie flopped upon release, but quickly won a reputation for being one of the greatest modern art house science fiction films.
Guests Introduction: Greg Hale and Eduardo Sanchez
00:01:12
Speaker
and we're joined today by horror movie making legends, producer Greg Hale and director Eduardo Sanchez. Greg and Ed exploded onto the movie scene with their debut film, the end of the millennium found footage horror, The Blair Witch Project in 1999.
00:01:29
Speaker
Blair Witch was shot on a micro budget and used a combination of bootstrapped production techniques, an unknown cast, and a genius marketing campaign that exploited the early days of the internet to hoodwink a generation. Blair Witch spawned several sequels and spin-offs and remains not only one of the most innovative horror movies of all time, but it generated one of the highest returns on investment of any movie ever made, having been shot for around
00:01:56
Speaker
Half a million bucks, I think, and generating $250 million worldwide. Greg and Ed have worked on numerous other movies and TV shows over the years, including Lovely Molly, VHS, VHS 2, Star Trek, Strange New Worlds, Yellow Jackets, American Horror Story, and more.
00:02:12
Speaker
This year, they're venturing into the world of audio drama with the release of their podcast series, Black Velvet Fairies, which is part of their Emerald Anvil world, which features drama, board games, NFTs, and even a novel.
Greg Hale's Take on 'Under the Skin'
00:02:26
Speaker
So welcome, Greg and Ed. Well, actually, that's a bit of a misnomer because we don't actually have Ed online just yet. Not yet. He'll join us very soon. So how are you, Greg?
00:02:41
Speaker
I'm good, guys. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. No, thanks for joining us. We're really looking forward to this. So yeah, under the skin. Yeah. It's a bit under the radar. And it's a bit of an eclectic choice. So tell us why you decided to talk about under the skin. Well, I mean, I definitely know that you guys are super serious about your sci-fi fantasy and horror. So I knew that I couldn't go with something obvious.
00:03:10
Speaker
So I tried to give you guys some more interesting choices. I've always loved Under the Skin. I think it's really one of the great science fiction horror films ever made. And it just seemed like a good deep project that we could dig into together. Because I know you guys are going to have great insights and stories about it too.
00:03:32
Speaker
There's a lot going on with Under the Skin, that's for sure.
Comparing 'Under the Skin' to 'Species'
00:03:37
Speaker
Did you see it when it first came out? Because it really was a bit of a sleeper. I saw it when it was theatrical release. I actually saw it twice in the theater, I think. And I'm pretty sure that the first time I saw it, I did not, because I typically try to avoid getting too much information about a movie before I see it.
00:04:03
Speaker
And there wasn't a lot of information about that movie out anyway. So I'm pretty sure when I foresaw it, I did actually not had not been given the pitch that Scarlett Johansson is an alien hunting men. So I was kind of figuring it out or trying to figure it out as you went along, which was kind of an amazing way of seeing it. And then having a completely different experience. The second time I saw it in the theater, you know, knowing in advance, like what
00:04:32
Speaker
what was happening.
Reception and Art House Acclaim of 'Under the Skin'
00:04:34
Speaker
I wonder if it didn't do very well at the cinema and I didn't see it when it came out of the cinema. I saw it a little bit after that and I've re-watched it since to swat up for this recording but I wonder if it, I mean there's a few reasons probably why it didn't do so well and I wonder if one of the reasons is that
00:04:56
Speaker
the plot line sounds quite similar to species. You know, the sort of crappy science fiction sort of, I want to do in quote marks, erotic science fiction thrillers in the mid-90s. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the thing about it, you know, when you hear it pitched, you know, she's an alien that, you know, I guess, you know, disguised as a human hunting, hunting men.
00:05:24
Speaker
It does, it kind of sounds like a B-movie, science fiction plot. And it definitely, you know, could
Film vs. Novel: Ambiguity in 'Under the Skin'
00:05:31
Speaker
be, but it's obviously, you know, not that at all. I don't know, I definitely boned up on my, under the skin, I watched it a couple of times in the last week and I read a bunch of stuff about it for the podcast today. I guess it premiered at Venice or one of the big festivals and got like half the audience booted.
00:05:54
Speaker
Like it got actively booed at its premiere, which is to me, somebody who really loves it. It's kind of shocking, but then you start thinking about it. It's like, okay, I kind of see like, if you don't go in for the ride, like right at the beginning that the movie would be really boring. Well, it's certainly challenging. Let's say that. Yeah. And it's, um, and Jonathan Glaser, the,
00:06:28
Speaker
Yeah, and that's that's how that came off the end of a few years of British gangster movies and that and the dialogue in that was like machine gun rat, you know, Ben Kingsley doing Don Logan rata tata tata that no, no, no, no, no, no. And that was our maximal dialogue. And then he goes to this, which is minimal dialogue. And so it is definitely a vault of fast from Glazer. So it probably did.
00:06:41
Speaker
the director. He was probably best known for Sexy Beast. Have you seen Sexy Beast?
00:06:50
Speaker
pull the rug out from a few people. But it is a great film. It is a great film if you take it on its own terms and you try to unpick exactly what's going on. Did you read the original novel by Michael Faber? I did not. I did look up a little bit about that. I guess it's like very, very different from... I think it's supposed to be... I've not read it either.
00:07:15
Speaker
I think from what I gather, it's a bit more on the nose. And the Johansson character, the woman.
00:07:23
Speaker
is it's explicitly mentioned that she's working for an intergalactic food corporation or something. And it just reminded me of Peter Jackson's bad taste. And I thought, oh, I'd rather have bad taste, you know. And I actually prefer the ambiguity of Glazer's film.
Jonathan Glazer's Filmmaking Techniques
00:07:42
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I have not read the novel, although apparently it's really good. Right. It would run all sorts of awards. Faber writes beautifully. There's no doubt about that.
00:07:52
Speaker
And I guess, and I guess Glazer was working on the film for like 10 years. Yeah. At some point Brad Pitt was attached to be the alien. It was going to be a husband and wife alien team.
00:08:08
Speaker
The one that went into production in terms of the screenplay was the third one because the first two screenplays were almost the book. And Jonathan Glaser was saying when he was making it that, sorry on the interview, when he was making it that the method of shooting it informed
00:08:28
Speaker
the actual outcome of how it looked and how it became less, you know, more minimal and less glitzy, I suppose, which is what those people who didn't like it were expecting when they went to the cinema. And they just see the word alien and they're expecting spaceships. They're expecting all that kind of stuff so often. You know, I think when you see Scarlett Johansson's name attached to it, you certainly get an expectation of something when she plays to type. I mean, she plays to type.
00:08:58
Speaker
in a respect in the fact that she's in as far as she's playing a beautiful woman and it's explicitly intentional that she is beautiful that is the point of this movie but at the same time she's playing against type as well and it's I guess you know from a filmmaker's perspective I'd like to talk about some of the techniques that Glazer used and also the use of somebody like Johansson who's a
00:09:23
Speaker
a bonafide A-list star, and also one of the most glamorous and beautiful actresses in the world. And when she's, you know, so I guess the first question is, from her perspective, and from the filmmakers perspective, is that a risk using an actress of that stature in a movie like this? And the second question is about the
Character Development and Themes in 'Under the Skin'
00:09:48
Speaker
technique. So again, from your perspective as a filmmaker,
00:09:51
Speaker
One of the things that Glazer did was have Johansson drive around in this ratty old white van around Glasgow, talking to these young men. And these young men were real Glaswegians. They were not, they're not actors. They didn't even know they were being filmed because Glazer put hidden cameras into the van. So they would walk up to Johansson or she would wind down the window and initiate a conversation, most likely wholly improvised.
00:10:20
Speaker
Yeah. And again, there's something really risky that strikes me as really risky anyway. So what's your take on that? I mean, I love it. I honestly, I think that's why the movie works. You know, I think that there is something about that kind of naturalistic performance that it's not a performance. I mean, that's kind of the whole point, right? Those men aren't performing. They're not aware that they're performing at all. They're just being themselves and they're very
00:10:48
Speaker
naturally reacting to Scarlett Johansson, even though they don't recognize who she is, they're reacting to the beauty in exactly the way you would in real life, right? The nervousness. Exactly. Nervousness. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and then the bravado, like the way she lures them into saying certain things or feeling certain things and you see it in their faces as it's working on them.
00:11:14
Speaker
It's such a strange thing. I thought that the alien species, they must have enough knowledge about humans to understand that there's a sexual attraction between male and female. But I think that's really as far as it goes. I don't think the aliens had to understand the concept of beauty until
00:11:36
Speaker
the Johansson character, the woman sees herself in the mirror a little bit later on because she treats all of the men exactly the same way. She talks to them, she compliments them, she says you have a nice smile, nice eyes. And the men are just, like you said, you'd think that the men are always, not the aggressor, but on the front foot when it comes to sexual interactions, but these men are
00:12:03
Speaker
very nervous when it comes. The first one, she winds down the window and she says, excuse me, can you tell me the way to the A8, the M8, whatever it is. And the lad, and he's only about 18, he looks in the window and you can see it for about half a second. He's petrified because it's this beautiful woman who's looking
Gender Roles and Power Dynamics
00:12:25
Speaker
at him. The first guy that doesn't get in the car.
00:12:29
Speaker
The guy that doesn't get in the van, yeah, yeah, yeah. But they all have, there's all like a little, you know, fear or surprise or something in that interaction that, you know, that just makes it feel so real. And I think you couple that with all the, you know, apparently they just drove around for hours and hours and hours and hours shooting, not only the hidden camera stuff inside the van, but shooting outside to catch all the people on the street.
00:12:59
Speaker
And I forget how many hours they had, hundreds of hours of footage that they had to sort through, but it was that documentary. It's a little Blair witchy, right? In a way, right? It's this feeling that it's a documentary in a way that's really, really hard to simulate. So I think the fact that like, you've got such a surreal,
00:13:23
Speaker
premise, right, this alien with this really surrealistic thing that she's doing to the men with the black goo and all this stuff that's like really outlandish visually, like what the hell is going on? Coupled with stuff that's like so common and mundane and everyday. I think it's that juxtaposition between those two extremes that really make the movie work, right? And it's watching her
00:13:50
Speaker
as a character navigate her way to some sort of like middle ground where she's kind of under, because she has no understanding of what she's seeing out those windows, right? At first. And then the movie really is about her kind of coming to an, trying to come to an understanding about something that she did not understand at the beginning.
Journey from Predator to Self-Aware Being
00:14:11
Speaker
I mean, it's really, it's a beautiful, in a way, it's a really grotesque movie, but it's also a really beautiful,
00:14:17
Speaker
film in a lot of ways, sad and horrific. The two things that it reminded me of when I was rewatching it was the Margaret Atwood quote about men are afraid that women will laugh at them and women are afraid that men will kill them.
00:14:34
Speaker
and it's an inversion of that. That's the thing that I thought of. Because it's flipped that completely on its head. The men, they're not afraid of Johansson's woman. They're not afraid of her, but they are. And they do, once they realise, oh, I'm actually in here, they do pursue her. But at least to a grisly end, they are wary.
00:14:57
Speaker
I think there's a deeper point to that in terms of she doesn't become scared of humans or men until she becomes self-conscious. Yeah, until at the beginning when she's witnessing allowing the baby on the beach and those people and she's completely oblivious. And it's not until the woodcutter at the end where she feels threatened in a sexual way. And that's the second thing that the film reminded me of. You mentioned the woodcutter is Snow White.
00:15:25
Speaker
It follows actually quite, I think, when you get under the skin, there's actually a Snow White mechanism going through this film, because at the beginning, she's doing something pretty grisly to these men, and she's also very beautiful.
00:15:43
Speaker
And she doesn't know that she's beautiful. She goes through the department store and copies the other women because they're putting lipstick on, they're trying on makeup, they're putting on skirts and trousers, they're trying out new fashion. She just copies them because that's what the other women do. She doesn't know, she's just trying to blend in. She doesn't know that it's to accentuate beauty or to stand out. Later on, when she sees the mirror, she begins to understand.
00:16:10
Speaker
And when she has the sexual encounter with the kind man, the kindly man from the bus, that accentuates her self-consciousness as well. In Snow White, in the original Snow White, Snow White and the Widow Queen, one of the things that the Evil Queen does before sending her into the woods is give her gifts. She gives her a gift of a hairpin, a hairbrush and a mirror.
00:16:35
Speaker
And you think, well, why would you do that? Why would you give a beautiful, a beautiful young girl a hairpin, a hairbrush in the mirror? Because they make you self-conscious, which is exactly what happened to her. When she looked in the mirror, she realized she wasn't the most beautiful woman in the land. It was Snow White. So what do you do? You make them self-conscious. And as soon as Snow White becomes self-conscious, she becomes
00:16:57
Speaker
scared and she has to run into the woods and she has to escape. And it's the same thing which happens with Johansson's woman here. She has to run as soon as she becomes self-conscious. I don't know what you think of that. It just occurred to me as I was watching it. No, totally makes sense. I mean, especially the woodcutter thing, which would not surprise me at all if that was an intentional analogy that he was trying to make. One of many very subtle things that's happening
00:17:26
Speaker
in that movie, you know, that he... Yeah, I mean, because originally, our expectations for the dynamic between the men and the women of the woman is subverted at the beginning, where she is the predator, and the men are the unwitting victims. And by the end, because she's, she becomes self conscious, and possibly she's trying to understand her role in what's happening to the humans. It's she, she becomes more human, she fulfills the
Alien Symbolism and Metaphysics
00:17:55
Speaker
the expected, what would you say, gender role in the sexual dynamic and the woodcutter is the predator. Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I always kind of took it as that she's, she's deciding, and I guess this does track with the novel. I did not, you know, this when I saw it, but it does track with the novel is that she decides that she doesn't want to do this anymore. Like she's, um, she feels bad about,
00:18:24
Speaker
of praying on these humans, right? So she's having like a change of not only self-awareness, but she's having a conscience about what she's doing. And that's what she's kind of trying to get away from by, you know, leaving the man and walking in the rain when she finds the, as you said, the kindly guy. But yeah, like once she lets down that role as predator, she kind of becomes part of,
00:18:54
Speaker
like that Margaret Atwood quote, which is such a sad and true quote, right? She enters that realm, right? Well, now she is kind of setting herself, because she's not like physically any more capable of doing anything. It doesn't seem like, you know, not any more physically capable of doing anything to thwart what this guy wants to do. Yeah, she has the same physical strength and capability as a human.
00:19:21
Speaker
woman of her size and strength. She's not Black Widow in this film by any stretch, is she?
Practical Effects and Innovative Techniques
00:19:27
Speaker
Yeah, that our power really is whatever that weird transitional Black Room thing is. That's where the alien thing comes in. Yeah, I mean, the Black Room, just as a bit of context, the Black Room, where she successfully seduces one of the young men, you next see them, it cuts to an entirely Black Room.
00:19:49
Speaker
and she will undress and beckon the men towards her. Then the men will undress, they keep walking towards her because they're fixated on her and eventually they become consumed by this black goo. I mean, what do you think's going on there?
00:20:08
Speaker
You do, it's such a strange vignette, strange image. And such beautiful. I mean, really, my favorite imagery in the whole movie is all that black, the black room stuff. So at the very beginning when they find the body of the woman that she takes the clothes from, at the very beginning, that's an all white room. They're in an all white space.
00:20:33
Speaker
And then all the stuff with the men is in an all black space. And just practically, I was thinking that that was my take, was that the white space is some sort of in between realm that is a transitional state for the aliens to move into the human world. So she's in that state because she's prepared to go from whatever her alien,
00:21:01
Speaker
state of being as to being in the human world. And the black space is the opposite. The black space is where the aliens transition a human from an earthly realm or a human realm into whatever alien space that they're in. Because it's obviously it's not physical travel, right? It's some sort of like, you know, state of being or something that they're putting these men in because they don't even seem aware that they're in this black room.
00:21:30
Speaker
Right. Well, they enter a house into this rickety old house. Right. They enter a house and then they're suddenly in an all black space.
00:21:39
Speaker
And they don't really react to being in the space at all. All they're doing is react. All they see is Johansson. That's it. All they see is the woman. Yeah. Yeah. So, so to me, it's like that I always kind of thought that that's like some sort of like, it's not an entirely physical space. I mean, obviously they're physical, but something's happening to their physical bodies, but it's not just a physical space. It's some sort of like in between space, between the alien,
00:22:07
Speaker
world or realm and the human realm. It's something she can control than the men can't. He lets the guy with the cystrophibrosis or whatever, the guy with the facial tumors. He goes into the muck, he goes into the blackness, and then obviously she's able to pull him out and let him go. She makes that decision that she can get them out if she wants.
00:22:37
Speaker
I think that's when we first start to see her, for want of a better phrase, humanity coming.
Symbolism of Supporting Characters
00:22:43
Speaker
Because up to that point, the others who have gone in, so when you see the insides are teleported to another planet or that blood or whatever it is, or whatever it is, feeding a spacecraft, feeding her, wherever it's going, whatever that might be, the skin is left floating in that watery way.
00:23:03
Speaker
And he is set free, doesn't go through any of that. And there's an argument there for, again, this sort of toxic masculinity being the downfall for these people, chasing them. And he's got a lot more compassion, a lot more humility. And she starts to feel, you know, that kind of
00:23:26
Speaker
I took that as where you see two of the men see each other, two of the victims see each other in the black goo. I took it, I read it as and then you see everything under the skin, it disappears or is consumed and all that's left is the skin like you say.
00:23:47
Speaker
And I read that as being, well, the skin, the surface is not important to the aliens. That's a waste product or a byproduct. They're not interested in that. They're interested in what's underneath.
00:23:59
Speaker
Yeah. So that's what they value. And you see that in that I think that supports the idea that when Johansson, the woman is talking to anybody, whether it's, you know, whether that you'd say that that guy is quite good looking, or it's the man with the facial tumors, she treats them exactly the same, because she's not actually interested, even though she pays them a compliment.
00:24:21
Speaker
You have nice hands, you have nice eyes, you have a nice smile. She's not interested in what's on the surface, not until she becomes self-conscious of her own looks. Yeah, yeah.
00:24:33
Speaker
she's fulfilling a role, isn't she? That's what her... She is, it's a nice job. The guy on the motorbike who has to then get more guys on the motorbike to come and help him find her because she's gone rogue and she's not doing what she's meant to be doing. Yeah, we should talk about the man on the motorbike because this is the one thing I couldn't quite figure out. He's like a handler. He's like a handler or something. Her life, I think. The listener is a human.
00:24:56
Speaker
Is he another alien or is he a human that works for the alien? I mean, it's interesting, they all wear black and white leather, you know, like you've got she's wearing a fur coat, they're wearing leather, she's peeling her skin off this skin, you know, like there's a lot of coded stuff there to unpick or to get to to hint at.
00:25:13
Speaker
And for me, I first want because I've never seen it before. I was watching it. I thought I'd seen it before, but I was thinking about another film. Oh, really? Yeah, I was I was thinking about Under the Shadow, which is set in the 80s in the Iran war, where a woman is trapped in her apartment with a gin and shaving her baby.
00:25:33
Speaker
It's another dark, gritty, award-winning horror, sci-fi, whatever. But that's what I thought it was. So I started watching it. When he came on first, I was thinking, is he a familiar, like a witch is familiar? But as it goes on, I think you get the sense that, like Dan says, there's an element of him being a handler or some kind of bureaucrat because then a whole cadre of them come at the end when she goes rogue.
00:26:03
Speaker
and they're trying to find her. There's a scene where she is standing in the black space, just perfectly upright inert, just looking blankly ahead, and he's walking around her inspecting her, the way that you would expect a horse. He's looking in her eyes. They're not in the black space in that. Where was that? I don't know. I was trying to really watch that scene.
00:26:33
Speaker
They're on some sort of surface. She's on like a cobblestone street or something. He's not in the black space with her. He's in, it's a physical space that he's with her in.
00:26:48
Speaker
Well, that's right. The street, the street that goes with man on the bus, which incidentally IMDB have as a bud driver rather than bus driver, man on a bus. That is a cobbled street. And I think it happens at that time, doesn't it? When that's after she's leapt from the bed and
00:27:10
Speaker
Or she doesn't have any, no, she doesn't have any interaction with them after that. Cause she's a, she's run. She's on the run.
Insights from Eduardo Sanchez on Metaphysical Aspects
00:27:19
Speaker
It's before, um, I think it's before she meets the man with the facial tumors. Yeah. Yeah. But it's like, he's, it's like they do it. I always kind of took it as like, they've done a couple of runs and now he's going to check in on her and he's gonna, um, make sure that everything's like working. Okay. There's a knock on the door.
00:27:40
Speaker
Who's that? Oh, my God. It's Sanchez. Well, which project? Hello. Hello. Sorry, I'm late. We were clearing brush from an island like 10 minutes ago and ran in and cleaned up. No, I'm in my I have some land in West Virginia. And we were we were clearing brush from an island, so.
00:28:10
Speaker
And you, and you stopped clearing brush to come and talk to us. Yeah. Yeah. You guys are, you guys are real special. How are you doing Ed, apart from, you know, your brush clearing activities? I'm doing good. I mean, you know, the business is slow. Um, I wish I had more jobs, but, uh,
00:28:32
Speaker
You know, everything's good. Everything's pretty good. We're going to talk about that a little bit later on, aren't we? About the state of play in the film industry. We're talking about under the skin, you know. Oh my God. Yeah. What's your take on it? Because there's a lot of coded stuff going on in that movie and we're trying to unpick it. Yeah, we've had a big row. Really? I mean, I just watched it. Greg has been picking off all over the place.
00:28:59
Speaker
Really? I mean, like, like, you mean beyond like, this is like an alien and I, you know, and I started thinking about
Thematic Parallels with Other Films
00:29:08
Speaker
it. It's like, it's almost like they are, they, she's on a field trip. You know, she's like an adolescent or she's an, she's a toddler and they're, you know, those guys are basically babysitters and they just, they're just letting these things loose to experience humanity or whatever. But.
00:29:30
Speaker
Um, you know, that's, uh, that's where I kind of landed, at least today coming, uh, you know, driving to West Virginia, just thinking about it. What, uh, what do you guys, uh, how deep did you guys get? We were actually just talking about the motorcycle guys just now, like what their role was. Are they, are they handlers? Are they familiars? Are they masters? Are they servants? We were like, we were just talking about the, uh, motorcycle guys.
00:29:58
Speaker
I think that like, and you, do you guys, do you guys think that those, that those guys were also like not human? Yeah, I do. I think it seems that way, right? Yeah, I think it's, it's strongly, you know, strongly hinted.
00:30:14
Speaker
Yeah, it's that they're alien. But the thing is that the film is explicit about Johansson's woman being an alien. It doesn't leave it ambiguous. It's very explicit. You see what she really is underneath or under the skin, literally. So but with the men with the hand, the motorcyclist, let's say the motorcycle, it's ambiguous. And you're left at the end. The the final shot is of the motorcyclist standing on
00:30:43
Speaker
a mountain in the Cairngorms, probably, staring out at the landscape in human form. And that's it. There's no explanation given to that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, he's pissed off because he's going to get his wrist slapped. Yeah. Well, I mean, I get he's pissed off because he lost her, you know, he lost her or he lost it or whatever. But I think that, I mean, it's almost like, again, and the reason that I kind of went towards, like,
00:31:13
Speaker
You know, like a toddler, like, because, you know, she's very, you know, she's kind of experiencing things.
Aliens' Motives and Human Interactions
00:31:19
Speaker
And even though she's bringing these dudes back to be consumed in that liquid or whatever, which is trippy as shit. The it seems like the handler, like remember that scene where he's like looking at her, like it seems like the handler is definitely older, like an adult. And he's just like.
00:31:42
Speaker
You know, and he's just cleaning up after her, like, what are you doing? He's like inspecting her, right? He's like, I read it as like, he was checking that she was physically okay to do the job that she's supposed to do. Yeah. So checking her out, making sure she, her eyes and she, and he again, had no reaction to the fact that she's beautiful. He was just checking her out, not checking her out in that way, but checking, you know, like the way you check a car, you know, you kick the tires and you.
00:32:11
Speaker
Yeah, check the oil. That's what I didn't get that I think it was a psychological check to check that she's on task not not to see that she's she looks the part. Why did you
00:32:25
Speaker
Yeah, it's almost like it was really staring at her eye, like there's something about the eye that shows him whether she's, again, like you were saying, I guess, is she all right or not? I think she's just checking on her. Am I going to have to pull the plug or get another skin or what? And then the scene, and then it was interesting too, because that scene where she comes down the steps and stares into the mirror, he does the same thing.
00:32:56
Speaker
Like later on, you know what I'm saying? Like he kind of just looks in the mirror for a little bit like. Like he's also like checking himself out, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, interesting, interesting. I mean, look, I I I ultimately I I land on the on the side of he's an alien for a bunch of reasons, not the least of which is he definitely seems to have some sort of ability to track her because
00:33:25
Speaker
He goes to where that guy is coming out, the guy with the facial deformity. He goes right to the house where that guy is coming from. So he's like, I always kind of thought he's like honing in on some sort of residual signal that she has on him, but he's lost her signal, right? He can't, he's not picking up her signal anymore.
Philosophical and Existential Interpretations
00:33:48
Speaker
But he can find that guy for some reason, which makes me think that he's got some sort of extra sensory perception or something that humans don't have.
00:34:01
Speaker
But you've been mentioned a little bit earlier something about toxic masculinity and I'm the resident defender of the patriarchy or at least the mainly because I'm the one that's called mainly qualified for it because I've got the kids, but it's
00:34:25
Speaker
Don't laugh. You missed something. Probably best that I missed that. I probably can guess.
00:34:45
Speaker
You were saying, I'm trying to work this out. He follows her up and he has some sort of means of tracking everything. So some sort of surveillance capability is interesting. If the masculine part of his personality is completely unfettered and left to evolve to its
00:35:06
Speaker
to its conclusion, then that becomes unbridled tyranny. So that's the masculine pathology, tyranny, an imposition of holistic order over everything, surveillance, tracking, control, whereas the unbridled feminine
00:35:22
Speaker
is consumption and chaos. It's the opposite. And so you need, obviously, mythologically, you need a mixture of both in order to create a happy medium so that the world, the future can be unfolded, but not too much. It can be ordered at the same time. You can make sense of it, but not too much sense because you need to evolve. You need to have a little bit of chaos.
00:35:43
Speaker
And maybe that's, I don't know, maybe that's what the black goo is. It's like this chaos state, this unbridled, unfettered feminism that the men just become, they literally sink into it because they have no control over themselves. They have no control over the situation. But the motorcyclist, if he has that surveillance capability, then maybe he is like the
00:36:06
Speaker
the unfettered conclusion of the masculine temperament in this sort of weird alien context. And Johansson's woman, at least before she goes rogue, is the feminine equivalent of that because she's completely chaotic. She acts in a way that these young men, when we've said their reactions are genuine, she acts and reacts in a way that these young men don't expect and it makes them quite nervous and eventually she literally sucks them into this
Metaphorical Elements: The Black Goo
00:36:34
Speaker
realm of this weird realm of chaos. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I know that the novel, I know that the novel, which again, have not read, but read the Wikipedia, read the Wikipedia, is that it's pretty explicit that she's gathering them for food. She works for a food corporation. She's gathering them for food.
00:37:01
Speaker
I think there's, it's kind of implied that maybe the physical form has something to do with it. Like Bean was talking about like the little meat shoot that appears after the one guy gets, you know, the meat gets sucked out of his skin. But I always thought that she's actually doing something a lot deeper or more primal or something than actually eating, that they're not just getting the meat. Cause it doesn't make any sense. Like practically like what,
00:37:30
Speaker
practically, it would be so much easier for them to harvest humans a ton of different ways of harvesting humans that would be a lot more efficient than sending some sort of spy down to lure them into a black goo and do all this shit, right? Just drop down in some isolated village and take them 200 at a time and
00:37:50
Speaker
then nobody ever knows that you've taken those two. That seems a lot more efficient if they're just for food. So I always kind of thought that the emotional thing was kind of part of it. Like Ed was saying, like she's some sort of, there's something experiential at stake for the aliens, right? That there's some sort of mission that has to do with understanding the emotion or the soul of somebody.
00:38:15
Speaker
right? That's what I always took the goo as being not so much a physical thing as a metaphysical thing, that something metaphysical is happening to these men, and they're harvesting something like their soul more than they're harvesting, you know, 150 pounds of meat and bone, which doesn't
00:38:34
Speaker
You know, make a lot of it. It is interesting when you see the two men in the goo and they then they realize they see each other, they see they notice each other and they they have an a little intimate moment, don't they? When one of them touches the other one's hand, you know, almost like a gesture of comfort. Yeah, I suppose. Yeah. Yeah.
Realism and Practical Effects
00:38:53
Speaker
Yeah. Until the one guy realizes how gooey the other guy is.
00:38:58
Speaker
Yeah, the guy, yeah, the other guy's skin is like, he's like falling apart. Um, uh, well, I mean, you know, I mean, look, the one that's all in camera sequences. That's a really all just filmed. I mean, I'm sure they're enhancing some stuff here and there with CG, but all that stuff is, uh, is a physical makeup job in a water tank.
00:39:26
Speaker
Okay, it's really You look at the video of all everything is physical the goo is is a 100% physical effect And how they figured out how to do it I won't get into it because it would take a long time You should look it up like the making of like the behind the scenes Almost everything is in camera and it's really amazing. It's really amazing
00:39:53
Speaker
Well, because there's a yeah, like the thing about the goo, you know, I was like, it's kind of amazing that it's practical, because like, there's no waves or anything. So it's, it's, it's viscous enough to not like, you know, you know, there's no, it doesn't act like even like oil, you know what I'm saying? And also, there's that one shot where the dude
00:40:17
Speaker
literally like keeps his eyes on her. I mean, all of them do, but they have a shot where he just goes in and you see the goo all the way into his eyes and he doesn't blink. And I was like, yeah, that's, uh, you know, I, you know, again, that's why I thought that's, you know, maybe that's, you know, some kind of CG or something, because like, it just, I mean, look, it looks real as hell. And it's just like, man, how'd they pull that off?
00:40:42
Speaker
You gotta watch the film only had the budget of what, 6 million bucks. So it wasn't really, yeah, it's a 24 movie. So it's not, it's not much money. And early and early eight 24, they got a little more cash now, but back then they didn't. Wow. I had no idea it was that cheap. Really? So I guess, you know, they, they, they spent some money on like filming on location.
00:41:08
Speaker
He's had to pay Scarlett. They had to hire a van and I guess the rest of them. Yeah. I mean, other than the goo, other than the goo, it's a pretty cheap movie, you know? True. The goo, the goo and the practical makeup effects in the water, in the water tank. Yeah, that's true. That's true. It's pretty simple.
00:41:37
Speaker
Yeah, you got you got you got to build that black the goo room. The goo room, she probably she probably did it for scale. She probably didn't. I bet she didn't demand a fee. I think she was a court, by all accounts, she was she was very attached to it and she stuck with it even when it was caught in development hell. She stuck with it for three or four years. Yeah. So as I can tell. Yeah. Yeah.
00:42:06
Speaker
We probably better wrap up the first half of our recording. I just wanted to ask actually, how did you, as a couple of Americans, how did you get on with the Glaswegian accents? There's definitely multiple lines in that movie where I have no idea.
Impact of Glaswegian Accents and Atmosphere
00:42:29
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I mean, I was, you know, yeah, it's the same thing. I was not. But also like the stuff that like the because she only talks to those guys like so there's not really that much like important information. So I was just kind of like because I like I mean, sometimes a great but they do distract me from the visuals, you know, and it's such a great such a visual film, you know, and yeah.
00:42:57
Speaker
So I wanted to avoid the subtitles and I was just like, you know, it's not, it's not like there's plot points being given in, you know, with their talk. So I was just like, let me just, you know, again, like Greg said, you know, every other sentence, I had no idea what the hell we were saying, but I, I wondered if, if Glasgow was, was chosen precisely because of that to make, to, to give it, especially for an international audience, give it that sense of that further sense of alienation and difference.
Director's Meticulous Filmmaking Approach
00:43:25
Speaker
Well, yeah, I don't know. I'm sort of reaching possibly with that. I could see that. I could see that. I mean, look, dude, he clearly, that guy thinks about everything. Yeah. There's nothing accidental.
00:43:38
Speaker
nothing accidental happens in his movies unless he wants it to be accidental like with the improv stuff with the guys right but everything in that guy's movies I mean you watch his own of interest and it's like it's all so meticulously thought through that did you watch zone of interest have you seen it yet yeah i've seen it twice yeah yeah and i've never wanted to leave a movie that was amazing more than that movie i thought it was just
00:44:07
Speaker
horrifying, but amazing. Well, we'll call it on that note. So thanks very much, Greg and Ed. We'll see you next time when we're going to be talking about Black Velvet Fairies, Blair Witch and other such horrors. So see you soon.
00:44:28
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Mars Radio 14, the third best radio station in the Martian Space Force broadcasting spectrum. My name is Captain Half-Meltkarten and today we're going to be looking at the planet Earth and the forest of Shanlaba fish team in particular to investigate a phenomenon known to humans as ghosts.
00:44:58
Speaker
And to do this, we've sent our traveling reporter, Lieutenant Bungalow, to go and to take a look. Can you hear me, Bungalow? Yeah. Yeah, okay. And why am I here again?
00:45:15
Speaker
This place smells like Anton being the bees. It's pitch dark. Were you not listening to the intro, bungalow? Uh... sort of? To be honest, I kind of... to be loud most of the time. No offense, it's just... you're a jackass. I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that.
00:45:40
Speaker
Anyway, you are in the forest of San Laberes team on planet Earth to investigate a phenomenon known to humans as ghosts bungalow. We did that already. No, we didn't bungalow. Yes?
00:45:58
Speaker
We did it with the Methago Wood episode of SFF Crownscast. I mean, would John Frickin Gerald have milk carton? Hello? That one was about phantoms. Which are a totally different phenomenon. And my name is Captain Heart Milk Carton to you. Get it right, Lieutenant. My title was hard earned. Ah, whatever you say. Anyways, I thought that episode was about, ooh, gold.
00:46:28
Speaker
your warshipfulness. It wasn't about ghosts! Nobody mentioned ghosts! It was about phantoms! Well, I thought it was ghosts. Well, I mean, I may have been hallucinating, um, uh, mushrooms. For all bloody god's sake, you went to Earth to investigate the phenomenon known to humans as ghosts. No, I thought you said it was phantoms, so it wasn't just me tripping on mushrooms. Ha!
00:46:58
Speaker
Anyway anyway, I'm back again doing the same thing Okay, right. I know wrong That's just to be clear. I was right fine. You were right. Okay
00:47:15
Speaker
And? And what? And what do you see inside Lava Fasting? Are there any ghosts? This is radio. The misters can't see what you are seeing. Oh yeah, okay. Well, I can see trees. I mean, it's pretty dark, but... Well, there's a few spectres about the place. But to be honest, I'm having a bit of trouble talking to them every time I go up and say, hello.
00:47:41
Speaker
They just take off running. Well, you run after them then! Believe me, I tried. I mean, ghosts are fast. I wouldn't mind but they're wearing their anorex and carry camcorders, which you'd think would slow them down, but I mean, I still couldn't catch them. I'm in prime physical condition.
00:47:59
Speaker
Here, here, here, give me a minute and I'll try again. I just want to adjust my interior vestibule so that the just plumage can sprout underneath its tendrils. I mean, in case they start filming, you know, I need to... I need to look good. What do you mean? You know, so that they know the Martian Space Force!
00:48:21
Speaker
is always well turned out. Hang on, bungalow. Is that the truth? Because it sounds to me like you want to oppress these ghosts so you can go and be in their film. Tell the truth. You've never really liked me. Or Myers' Radio 14.
00:48:40
Speaker
You'd rather help a group of ghosts make a film in a forest on planet Earth than serve the needs of the listeners to the third best radio station in the Martian Space Force! I knew it! No, it's not like that at all. Well, I mean...
00:48:58
Speaker
Okay, maybe a little. Maybe a lot. Well, I tell you what, you do just that. Go up and make films which are phantom friends in the forest of Sandlobberfestine. They're not phantoms, they're... ooh, ghosts. I mean, you've said so yourself. Well, go up there and make films with ghosts. Well, I'd love to, but they keep running away from me. I don't blame them. For Obly God's sake. We leave it there, folks.
00:49:42
Speaker
This episode of Kronk's Cast was brought to you by Dan Jones and Christopher Bean with our special guests Greg Hale and Eduardo Sanchez. Additional content was provided by Brian Sexton and Jay Stalaper. Thanks to Brian Turner and all the staff at Kronk's and thanks to you for listening.
00:49:59
Speaker
Join us next time when we'll continue our conversation with Greg and Ed. The Filmmaking Joe talked to us about their forthcoming project Emerald Anvil, their audio drama Black Velvet Fairies and plans for the 25th anniversary of the Blair Witch Project. See you then!