Transcript
Speaker: Welcome back, everybody, to Death is a Photograph, Culture at the End of History. I'm here this week, no Sam. He's been banished to ah whatever that little two-dimensional screen and space is from Superman and Superman too I'm here with William Garcia Bigelow. I'll use the full name. I know him as Will because I've known him for many years.
Speaker: Will, you just had a movie come out, no? Wonderful, yes. So the movie is titled Sometime the Wolf, my movie. We shot it for $15,000. So we're going to be talking about Shallow Grave, which is like a nickels and dimes movie. But they made that for, you know, I think they had a million quid, it would have been at the time. You know, basically, why am I hosting this show if I haven't seen Trainspotting? Why am I responsible for an episode on Danny Boyle's first film if I haven't seen his most famous one?
Speaker: I think Shallow Grave is a ah better place to start than Trainspotting and ah was actually, as a child, one of the movies that really got me into filmmaking was like the one-two punch of Shallow Grave and Trainspotting back to back.
Speaker: I want to make you retell the story about finding out about Waylon Smithers and his sexualities.
Speaker: So this, I guess, will be the first time I've publicly told this story. It's not public. No one's listening. It's fine.
Speaker: I loved the Simpsons in elementary school, like ah six years old to 10 years old. And I kept watching it after that, but I would watch it, you know, episodes every single day. I own the box sets or would be lended the box sets and would be going through them. And there's this one episode that reveals that Waylon Smithers is gay.
Speaker: And he's like kind of being like bullied or being made to be an outcast because of it. And I remember I was sharing a room with my little sister at the time. She was asleep. My parents were asleep. I was alone watching it on like a little box television. And when Waylon Smithers was revealed to be gay, I just burst out crying, just could not stop crying and had to like wake my parents up.
Speaker: The thing is, is I've never quite been able to nail down what I found so emotionally affecting about it. I think it had something to do with that he hadn't chosen that for himself and yet was made an outcast because of it. And also that it's something that ah that I think you don't ah fully know you know who you are in terms of sexuality until you're older. So I think that there was even a little bit of like, a holy shit, can that be like a twist ending on my life? Yeah. I can get to be an adult and find out that I'm Smithers. Am I going to be an outcast in a way that I can't control, but I'm only going to like fully be able to reveal that when I'm like a 33 year old assistant to a corpse man. Exactly. Exactly. Well, insofar as, you know, Sam is not here this week and I'm responsible for making sure we talk about Gen X.
Speaker: There is something very Gen X about that, right? Because The Simpsons is this cartoon, cartoon for adults, which is itself a kind of Gen X idea, right? This like late 80s, early 90s idea. Yes, definitely.
Speaker: To have a show that can like teach you a kind of moral lesson like that, but in the form of a comedy about gay people, is probably something we could only owe to some you know something created by a bunch of like young boomers and Xers.
Speaker: Definitely. And I mean, we're even... in a different time right now in so far as like if Smithers was being revealed to be gay in season 32 or whatever they're on now. They take that long. Just so you know.
Speaker: It would definitely be from the perspective of like an empowerment angle, like Smithers would be a successful niche queer influencer on TikTok. It wouldn't be Smithers being excluded from the small American social lifestyle that it is in the late eighty s early 90s. There are a few more horrifying things I can imagine than like a yassified Waylon Smithers.
Speaker: But you were talking about Danny Boyle in the movie. So what what do you think about those two actually you know made you think about filmmaking as an art rather than just a thing you kind of consumed?
Speaker: I think part of the reason that I chose Shallow Grave is because Danny Boyle just released 28 years later, which I found extremely inspired.
Speaker: And I find it a very flawed movie in some ways, which I kind of think every movie that Danny Boyle has made is a flawed movie in some ways. And he's somebody who has spoken about how a great movie should always be flawed.
Speaker: because it's it's really swinging for things then. Like if something lands every trick it's aiming for, then it obviously had the ability to go further, but almost out of ego, reins it in to create a tighter experience. And Danny Boyle is so flashy.
Speaker: i over the past month have kind of fallen in love with Danny Boyle all over again in a way that I had when I was 12 and 13, where his really flashy style and really in-your-face, like, I just watched, ah I want to say BBC Scotland released a 30-minute documentary in 1995 called Burying the Bodies, I think it's called. And it's a behind-the-scenes look at the making of Shallow Grave and how difficult it was to make.
Speaker: Everybody's panicked, the entire production. i mean, it wouldn't be a good debut feature if that were not the case, probably. you know yes And it's interesting that John Hodge, the writer, brought on, I want to say, the producer, Andrew McDonald. And they seem like children. if They're so young. And then they had an open casting call for directors.
Speaker: And that's how they got Danny Boyle, was through a casting call. so Oh, wow. It really highlights that Danny Boyle has always been ah a bit of a gun for hire that then brings his own aesthetic to other people's screenplays. But he's not Quentin Tarantino or Paul Thomas Anderson, where he's he's inventing the project and the themes and the narrative language. He's a kind of reworking the page to his own language on the screen.
Speaker: Maybe we could start with just more or less what what happens in the movie. Basic premise, I think, is what you said in your notes, which is that it's a tale as old as time. it's It's just no honor among thieves, greed ruins friendships, and hiding a body takes ah an emotional toll on you.
Speaker: But it's three friends living in an and in a gigantic, like palatial almost, at Edinburgh apartment. Which is its own kind of weird Gen X dimension. because i mean Totally. It's this weird moment where they have roommates because you're in the aftermath of you know Thatcher in the 80s and all this stuff. So they're not like the most well-paid people on earth. They're junior professionals. yeah One's a doctor, one's a lawyer, and one is a ah journalist.
Speaker: Doctors are not paid as well in the UK as they are in America. If Sam were here, he'd be going off about it, believe me. Also, if I'm not mistaken, is David a lawyer or an accountant? Because I've seen both. I've seen him listed as both a lawyer and an accountant. And David is the Christopher Eccleston character. Yes.
Speaker: Who's kind of... um you know, at the beginning of the movie seems like sort of the most normal and yeah reticent to participate. And it's kind of like the moral center or the conscience of the film for the beginning. it's funny that you say that because I never see David that way. I see him as the most rageful.
Speaker: And the most pent up of the characters. He's the least kind of ah reconciled internally because he's a cruel and petty character who lives his life in this super straight laced way.
Speaker: So like, I think Juliet is like it almost an in-between. She's the doctor. Yes. And Alex, the Ewan McGregor character is the most attuned to his cruelty. Yeah. And I think that that's part of why it's their character arcs seemingly flip a little bit is that the person who was most attuned to their cruelty is the one who is able to have the, the least out of control narrative progression or character progression. So that's an extremely, extremely good point because the opening sequence after this very sort of Gen X, like run, little run, go style, hyper fast camera going down the street. Hyper fast and messy, messy camera work, but it really works. No, it does work. And it if it it's a very strange feeling because it's not so much the style of the rest of the movie, but I do think it situates it in time very strongly. but Totally. The point is, the the actual opening of the movie is them interviewing roommates. like The first person you meet
Speaker: you don't know this is a prospective roommate who for all you know is going to be the main character of the film you know what i mean it's just like a guy showing up at this apartment and maybe this is going to be a movie about you know this new roommate and his relationship with the three existing people but you very quickly learn that they get their kicks by torturing prospective roommates and there's a yes montage with like a goth girl and like a really kind of straight laced lady i think and And like ah a man who like clearly just went through a divorce. and the question the question they ask him is, when was the last time somebody told you that you were the sunshine of their life? And he just bursts into tears. It is a very funny movie.
Speaker: But in that moment, you do get this sense that like David wouldn't be there and wouldn't be in the apartment if he weren't comfortable with a certain degree of cruelty. Yes. Because the other characters- But also, would he engage in that level of cruelty without them yeah kind of urging him or welcoming him into that joyous cruelty?
Speaker: But what's interesting, and actually i just used the word, is when they do end up getting a roommate whose name is Hugo, who is a a novelist ostensibly, yes the reason they allow him in is because he is, quote, interesting, according to Juliet, right? Yes. So David has clearly been accepted because they've seen something in him, assuming he's the third one to join. We don't know that, but.
Speaker: they clearly saw enough in him to think that he belonged in the apartment. like Clearly, whatever they're up to is considered exceptional by them. like The kind of environment they're trying to curate is strange with comparison to the outside world. and you know We don't have our our Brit here, but it was hard for me not to see in that this kind of like culture of cruelty that you see in a lot of eighty s and 90s British movies. Like I'm thinking of some Mike Lee movies that are about sort of how society ends up slowly kind of degrading people's capacity for kindness.
Speaker: you think about something like naked, if you've seen that, but yeah you're you're right to say that about David and it becomes especially important because there will be this inversion and maybe that's what we should just briefly talk about is what the emotional arcs are for the characters real quick.
Speaker: Yes. So once Hugo moves in, who I also want to discuss with you whether you actually think he's a novelist or not. Yeah, I don't think he's a novelist. I don't think he's a novelist either. um I think he's like ah ah some kind of criminal of some sort. Anyway, Hugo moves in with them. They allow Hugo into their apartment, i think, because He's more mysterious than they are. He's more cynical than they are. And so, and he's older than they are. Right.
Speaker: So they allow him in and he immediately, like, I don't think he has one conversation with them after moving in. He immediately dies nude of a heroin overdose.
Speaker: Which they only find him because they're trying to torment him. Like he hasn't yeah come out. And so the only reason they even find the body is because they're planning to burst in on him like jacking off or whatever they, you know, he's doing. And they're all laughing when they're kicking the door. Yeah. They're violating his personal space. Like, this is so funny. Yes. Yes.
Speaker: i also found So they find him nude, dead of a heroin overdose with, I believe he has a needle in his left arm. And I also love the staging of the body in that scene where it it almost looks like a Renaissance painting or something where you have the person in in like this repose. Yeah. It's got a little death of Mara energy for the listeners who know that painting.
Speaker: He's in ah ah a bathtub. He's a French revolutionary journalist. Yes. He's like kind of slouched over in the bathtub. A hundred percent. Yeah, that's exactly actually the painting that it called to mind for me. Interestingly, also in the behind the scenes documentary, and I think this is the insecurity of filmmakers, is when they're watching the dailies and they see the way that he's posed, they're all like, oh my God, that looks so posed and fake.
Speaker: This is going to ruin the movie hit the way his body is laid out. Nobody would die in that pose. yeah Where I always watched it and thought, oh my God, that's brilliant, the way that he's posed in such a ah tableau of death.
Speaker: It's such a shock too, because you you have no reason as the viewer to think that he's going to die. Because again, much like with the first character who just turns out to be a rejected roommate, for all you know, Hugo is now going to be the fourth roommate that they're all going to be. You have no idea.
Speaker: And also the guy that that they cast in that role, I believe his name is Keith Allen, is a huge personality in the UK. And everybody was fighting Danny. Do not cast Keith Allen. He's going to take the whole movie over. You're going to lose control to him. People are going to think he's the main character.
Speaker: And Danny said that that's a good thing because then that pivot that he immediately dies is going to allow the audience to not exactly know where the film is going and what purpose Hugo is going to serve in the narrative when he arrives. So that's I think it really works to the benefit of the movie that they ended up casting him, but, um, they find the suitcase.
Speaker: Yes. Under his bed, uh, the Juliet, the female lead goes to call the police and Ewan McGregor finds a suitcase under Hugo's bed with a million pounds in it.
Speaker: And Ewan McGregor rushes over and hangs up the phone for Juliet and they decide, what are we going to do with this money? And she's like, uh, You know, we should turn it in and they decide to keep it. And once they decide to keep it, that means that they have to hide the body, which then becomes a ah pulling of straws to see who gets the short straw. and And David, very importantly, doesn't want to do it. So yes. If we want to think of this, you know, just kind of capping the summary, it's at that point that you get the actual shallow grave, right? The shallow grave in which they're going to bury the main, this ah Hugo character. And at the beginning, it's sort of the Ewan McGregor character is the most...
Speaker: It's just like, we have to do this. This is, you know, sort of adopts this very almost professional mentality. Like we're in this situation. The only way to get out of it is to dispose of the body by literally using a hammer to destroy his dental records that no one will be able to find, that identify the body, ah chop off the limbs that they're, bit you know, those are gotten rid of separately, put the husk in a shallow grave in the woods so that no one, if they do find it, they can even ID it. And then we're going to get away with it.
Speaker: And from there, it becomes the kind of classic tale that we'll started with where, that obviously can't last because they become suspicious of one another yeah in various ways. And I guess if we want to think about that as like a ah Gen X thing, and maybe we can think about other potential Gen X movies, even though it's this tale as old as time situation, there's something about making...
Speaker: the movie not just about suspicion but about repression that makes it feel especially of its time that's interesting yeah the listeners probably already know i'm a medievalist chaucer has a very famous version of this tale called the partner's tale but in that it's just three thieves and they just kill each other you know One of them poisons the wine for the other two who then kill him.
Speaker: So they kill him and then they both die from the poison, right? wow And it's just this moral tale, right? That's the point. don't Don't be greedy. And there are other complications, but it's straightforward. In this Boyle version, they become suspicious, but...
Speaker: The suspicion doesn't just arise because they're afraid the others are going to steal the money. The suspicion arises because it kind of like releases the instincts that already exist in them.
Speaker: It activates something that had been kept under the surface. yes And that feels to me very kind of like of this moment where... people in popular culture is starting to experiment, like with The Simpsons, and being more open about people's worst qualities. Yes. You know, the things that they can kind of bring to the the cultural soup that we may have suppressed in previous idealized representations. so The leader of social expose is The Simpsons. No, well, I mean, i do think, as as we were discussing before the mics were on, I do think
Speaker: people forget how sentimental the first season is. Oh my God, yeah. It's because James L. Brooks is doing like a I'm Still a Sitcom Guy. You know, sitcoms were meant to give these idealized portraits of society, right? and then Yes. The Cosby Show gets overtaken by Jerry Springer and The Simpsons going into the 90s, and it feels a little bit like in this version of the tale we're getting, it's taking seriously that problem of repression. Like it's saying that you can't just make these things go away.
Speaker: It also has the exact same setup as the sitcom Friends. Oh, with the roommates. Not only the roommates, but the episode one of Friends is ah Jennifer Aniston isn't really part of the friend group, and she's the new person who we enter through her eyes and then watch as she becomes part of the quote-unquote Friends.
Speaker: um And then when I was researching Shallow Grave, I actually saw that somebody had recut it into an episode of Friends. LAUGHTER
Speaker: um So i when I watch Shallow Grave, there is almost a sitcom quality to the staging and the setup. and But then there's this this, like you said, the antithesis of the sitcom is this cynical cruelty that all of them have.
Speaker: Maybe that's a good jumping off point for thinking about the the ways in which that cynicism ends up manifesting itself. So For example, things will eventually get so bad that the David character locks the suitcase containing the money into this loft, basically this third floor in this policial apartment that they have, and puts it in a water tank that's there for some reason. is that? I have no idea. All I can assume it is is a wooden pitch-painted water tank, maybe?
Speaker: But like, it doesn't really seem like somewhere anyone would live. So I can't really figure out like what the. No, it's like it's totally an attic. It's like an unfinished attic. Like David has to walk on the ceiling beam so he doesn't fall through the ah drywall ceiling.
Speaker: And it it gets to the point where he literally um drills these holes in the ceiling so that he can watch them at all times. It becomes a movie then about something like surveillance, like being able to watch each other's moves, right? Yes, yeah. And voyeurism, yeah. And sort of like how it is, once the trust breaks down, what substitutes in for it is basically watching each other. Yeah. And I don't know about you, Will, but for me in watching this movie, thinking about it in you know this kind of context, it I don't know, it made me think a lot about not just the distrust between the friends, but the distrust everyone as people become more atomized, which is symbolized by the breakup of the friend group.
Speaker: Right. Like they become atomized from one another. It becomes a stand in for the ways in which society is experiencing that process that like you're only watching each other through these like pigeonholes and you're afraid of being watched.
Speaker: Yes. Yeah, I would agree with that. and i think that part of why I felt like this movie was like very applicable to the end of the nineties or the end of that era gen X type of thing was almost ah less about any individual details and more like an accumulation of details. And one of them was that surveillance state sensation that they have going on in the apartment in the third act.
Speaker: It's also, mean, don't have Sam here, which is sort of a cruelty to us because he's a journalist, and I assumed he would have a lot to say about this. Oh, that would have been great. Yeah, because Alex, the character, is a UK-based journalist. Right. And I guess another portion of what we're talking about here this...
Speaker: moment where he gets put onto the case that he himself is responsible for, right? So there's this twist, I guess you'd call it a twist towards the end of the movie where, you know, the sort of like suspender wearing, you know, desk editor comes in is like, you're going a career. This is going make your career. See? And, you know, he's like standing in the bathroom with like, his like dick may as well be out. He may as well be like crying because, you know, he now knows that he's responsible for like watching as he is, you know, inevitably found response because he knows once they find the bodies, yeah, We didn't say this, but another sort of throwaway detail is that Hugo is being tracked by two gangsters who themselves are in a reversal immediately dispensed with by the roommates. Like you assume that the...
Speaker: By the nerdy roommate David, who brutally kills both of them and throws them down the attic ladder, which actually was just a crash test dummy that they used for any time a body needed to be thrown around. They rented a crash test dummy. Yes, yeah, that's what's wrapped in the trash bags when they chuck Hugo's body down the – or drop his – what is it? They drop the flashlight and then lug Hugo's body down the stairwell. Yeah, it's the classic – A little of the vertigo shot, a little of the top of the stairwell looking down as the thing falls down the length of the shaft. Because they live on the third floor or something like this. Yes, yeah. But they're faced with this very funny kind of thing that my wife and I, Gabby, were talking about.
Speaker: which is they can either dismember the body in the apartment, in which case it's going to be like covered in blood that will immediately come up in a blacklight. But then you don't have to carry it out as a big kind of structure.
Speaker: or you know carry it out, and like if anyone sees you, it's like, hey, those guys are carrying a body. There's nothing else it could possibly be. But then you don't have to worry about the blood problem, and they opt for number two. But we were really like laughing about that. Like, ooh, we're faced with this Catch-22, huh? Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Speaker: I also love that Juliet at first pulls the short straw, right? Where she has to cut up the body and then she's like, I'm not going to do it. No. So what what happens is um they all kind of agree to do it together, more or less.
Speaker: But then David... you know, maybe never gave verbal consent and starts doing the thing you like never want a co-conspirator to be doing in a movie, which is going like, I don't know, guys. Like, I don't know if I can handle this. yeah And they're like, all right, you know, whatever, you know, in for a penny, in for a pound. Like all of us need to be involved in the cutting up of the body because then,
Speaker: You know, nobody then the other one could blame the other two. Like we all need to be responsible. Yeah. So eventually Ewan McGregor, because he is kind of the shifty one, know, like he's the one. He's a little bit of the shit, the shit stir of the group. Exactly. Like he's constantly, you know, sort of causing problems.
Speaker: But then he's hands off whenever violence actually arises in there. Yes. Which is itself kind of, i mean, maybe we can talk about this in a minute, but like the relationship between the movie and violence, because obviously that's a big sort of 80s, 90s problem. Something we talk about on this podcast a lot is the video nasties, which are those sort of like 80s movies, you know kind of like slashers and things that the British government band But what happens is Eudemar Gregor, as the kind of cunning one, is like, okay, fine.
Speaker: Whoever pulls the short straw has to do all of it. So, you know, one of us will dig the hole, one of us will do this, but whoever gets the short straw has to cut up the body. And of course, David, you know, as a matter of sort of dramatic tension, ends up getting the short straw to do the body.
Speaker: which is when we learn that he's capable of more than it seems like he is because yes there's this horrifying scene where he sort of is, you know, like he's chopping, he bangs the guy's face in with like a hammer really viscerally, which is reflected in a later shot when he dismembers the Two gangsters and there's like red backdrop and he's in silhouette. and he's like Which also, did you realize that that was like an exact homage to the burying of the body in Goodfellas just four years or three years prior? No, it's like an ah an exact recreation of the shot.
Speaker: And I wondered whether that, I mean, I feel like it had to be intentional homage because Goodfellas was one of the biggest movies in the world had come out three years prior. And then they have a similar sequence shot in exactly the same way, uh, in the woods with a big, uh, diffused red backlight, creating a silhouette of the main characters piping in a bunch of fog.
Speaker: But yeah, it's, it's ah an exact recreation of Goodfellas, uh, body burial shot what do you make of that in terms of Boyle as a filmmaker because we kind of skirted around this earlier and Gen X is sort of like the indie generation right like a lot of these guys Paul Thomas Anderson Quentin Tarantino Richard Linklater yeah David O Russell oh sure um you know all these and all these guys they get their start in this indie scene and there are different directions people go in but one of the major dimensions of this or one of the major facets is homage or pastiche, right? Maybe even more pastiche than homage. yeah And Boyle is weird because as you were saying earlier, it doesn't really feel like that's his game necessarily because he's a gun for hire, yet we're finding these resonances with prior movies that he's obviously drawing on. So, I mean, do you have any thoughts about how that particular aspect of
Speaker: Gen X filmmaking where it feels like all that's left to do culturally is kind of reassemble these parts. Honestly, I think that that happened to just about everything creative once the Internet came out.
Speaker: So it seemed like right around when the internet was becoming a mainstream thing, it had this like end of history effect. It's in the podcast name. Yeah. Oh, true. Yes. Yeah.
Speaker: Where we started looking towards the past as if all style had already been developed. And now it was up to us to curate or rework previously existing styles. Yeah.
Speaker: um So like whether it's fashion or music or anything, it all seems to look backwards now. But part of what I really like about Boyle and have started to like re-appreciate in the last year or two is I was watching an interview with him and he, you know, he loves classic cinema. He loves world cinema and he learns from previous cinema. But he said that somebody asked him if you had one piece of advice for young feature filmmakers, what would it be? And he said, don't respect your elders too much.
Speaker: That's very Gen X sentiment. I mean, it is. Yes. It's so like, I'm willing to learn from tradition, but to some extent I'm going to repudiate it. Yes. Yeah. And I think that's a good thing. I think that's a very good thing for culture is to um ah learn the rules and then break them. Don't just think that you're above the rules.
Speaker: And Boyle, I think a lot of his filmmaking style comes from like more frenetic media than what you would have seen in feature filmmaking up till that point. So you know a lot of the stuff in the apartment feels very traditional filmmaking, but a lot of cutaways and stylistic and editing choices feel much more indebted to music videos and MTV. the opening, ah yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, the opening definitely, which is shot on like a 10 millimeter fisheye lens or even the framing device of the, you know, spiraling camera on David's face. David is the narrator. I guess it's not really important, but like he is. Yes. You don't know The only narrator, right? Because am I mistaken in that Alex narrates the ending?
Speaker: Yeah, at the very, very, very end. Yeah. Like at the very, very, very end. And there is a kind of an irony there because David, who's the narrator, for most of it, you're just seeing a shot of kind of his blank stare.
Speaker: And you're assuming that it's because he's been sort of mentally ruined by whatever has happened, right? He's talking about treachery. Of course, he's not going to survive. And you realize that it's in fact his body. Whereas Alex, who does succeed the Ewan McGregor character at the end of the movie is flat on a floor stabbed.
Speaker: And so he's in actually a very similar nail nailed to the floor with a ah butcher knife. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And you kind of get this final moment of, of his victory. and in that moment, he actually looks basically just like David. It's just, he happens to still be alive yeah and David is not.
Speaker: Which also I wanted to ask you about that. Do you because I came across this bizarre theory that I was like, huh, where they said, ah is Alex alive at the end at all?
Speaker: Because, like, first of all, if police find a living body nailed to the floor by a butcher knife, they don't leave him on the floor until he wakes up and then start questioning him. Yeah. Or no, he wakes up to pictures. So what they're doing is they're like, they're taking closeups. Like he's a dead body. Yeah. Yeah. And then the, the detective says something like, well, well, well, Alex. And then Alex says something, but I don't think it ever garners any immediate responses. No, because it basically goes directly to the morgue because it ends at the morgue where David is being buried.
Speaker: Which, oddly enough, or painfully enough, was a real morgue. So Christopher Eccleston was being slid into a real collection of dead bodies. Like there were many dead bodies in there and they had to sland Christopher Eccleston. Danny said that Christopher Eccleston was like, I really don't know that I can be locked up in a morgue with a bunch of dead bodies. He agreed to do it as long as a prop guy was already in there. So when the door closes, he could be next to him being like, it's okay, Chris. It's okay. It's okay. i almost feel like would be worse. Do you know what I mean?
Speaker: like Like, I don't know. Like voices from the other side. Yeah, yeah like ah like a voice talking to you while you're in there seems almost creepier. But I do understand. i You know, I hadn't considered that. And it is in the traditional version of the story, usually no one gets away. You know, like in the Chaucer version. Yes. Because the point is social breakdown, right? Like if someone gets away with it, it defeats the moral purpose of the story as it usually exists. Yeah. I do think the element you're talking about, though, does kind of fit in with this boundary pushing thinking about, I guess, what morality is going to mean in popular cinema.
Speaker: So if he's dead, yeah, it fits into the more typical classification. But if he's living, then the character you start out thinking is the worst guy. you know quote unquote, gets away with it. yeah Now, mind you, in a way, Alex hasn't really committed that major of a crime. i mean Meaning, like he didn't kill the two gangsters. like He hasn't killed anyone.
Speaker: And that's also an important distinction, to I think, to make is like the only two people that they participate in the deaths of are like stone cold murderers. Well, and he and he doesn't even have anything to do with it. Like he's immediately overpowered and his roommate kills them.
Speaker: It would be self-defense. I mean, in any like 100 percent is self-defense. It's just that they've ah created a self-defense situation that they can't explain the beginnings of. And so they can't go to the police.
Speaker: I think that's actually a very important point because the movie is, i think, very explicitly about these kind of like mean people who do this very human thing, right? Which is that they find this money and that that's enough to, you know like you don't go into it thinking that they're evil. You think they're a little cool. You think they're a little bit maybe like- They're actuals. But you're not like they deserve to be like gruesomely murdered by gangsters, right? No, what they do deserve is when the prospective roommate that they mock turns out to be at the dinner gala yeah and beat and personally him and his friends beat the shit out of Alex. That's that's like what their characters deserve.
Speaker: I forgot about that scene and I'm glad you mentioned it because it is like maybe the only moment of something resembling like moral comeuppance that the movie has. Right. Because in the end you're not like, well, thank God they all died. And the money was either held onto Alex cause he didn't die or the cops were gay. Cause like,
Speaker: The money is probably from like the dirtiest means you can imagine. but We have no idea, but it's not like the money was like stolen from some little old lady. right like No. so The movie is very consciously kind of amoral in it both its presentation of the situation and just of like what the situation is. like The actual place the money comes from is allows you to not cast judgment on the characters, except for in that one moment,
Speaker: where Alex is confronted by someone he is legitimately wrong, who is in a position to like set it right. So it's this weird little like moral moment in a sea of of ah of this kind of amoral perspective.
Speaker: Totally. And just to touch on one more Gen X thing that I thought was applicable was how they use their money to buy cameras and TVs and a robotic baby and all that. All this stuff that also speaking of the robotic baby, I would bet you money is the inspiration for the dead baby crawling on the ceiling and train spotting. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the exact same robotic baby with just a fake face put on it. Cause it, it mechanically moves the exact same way, but even that, like,
Speaker: Yeah, the reason it feels so Gen X to me is just this accumulation of details. Like, even when they're watching the video that they made and they roll over and you realize Alex is the one in, like, the sheer black negligee, not the woman. Yeah, not Juliet. Yeah. Yes. Well, it's another Goodfellas moment.
Speaker: Like, mean, this is sort of a bigger... Oh, like when they, in Goodfellas, start spending the money from the end. When the wife has the fur coat and he's like, what the fuck is wrong with you? Yeah, and in this movie...
Speaker: Again, this is still early enough that the David character is still kind of the voice of reason. yeah And so he is just like, we have to keep going to work. We have to pretend that everything is fine. and you know We have to do blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: And immediately the other two characters go on this shopping spree. And Will is right to say, what do they buy They buy like a you know several hundred or maybe even thousand pound camcorder. Uh-huh. They have a fantastic line in the screenplay that makes it to the finished film there, where David says, ah how much did this cost about the camera? And Alex keeps going like, I don't know, David. I don't know, David. I don't know, David. He keeps just saying, I don't know. And then he says, ah she goes, it cost 500 pounds.
Speaker: And he goes, no, you paid 500 pounds. We don't know yet how much it costs, which is just such fun writing. I like it too, because it's, it allows you to still feel this grounding. And David is the voice of reason is this character who is like at in the only person who seems to in any way, be even considering the fact that they might be apprehended for what they've done. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Like,
Speaker: The other two characters really do believe that the bearing of the body, and of course we know the title of the movie, we know the grave is too shallow, like it's it's built into the name, but they're the classic like we've outsmarted the police characters. Totally. But just to go back to the camcorder kind of situation, i think it's an excellent point because What could be more sort of like 80s, 90s than this feeling of being able to record your intimate moments?
Speaker: But of course, what are their intimate moments? Playing dress up in a black negligee, like just destroying the house with takeout food, like yeah throwing stuff everywhere. Driving a little ah radio RC car around the house and a robot baby. yeah like you You get this feeling that they are sort of like giant children. And I mean, keep in mind that one of them is literally a doctor, is like literally a physician who is like responsible for your health. And we like see her at work. Another great line relating to the doctor is one of my favorite lines in the movie is when they say, Juliet, you do it. and She goes, I can't do it. And they go, you're a doctor. You kill people every day.
Speaker: Yes, that's such i also love like Gavin. was like, well, why doesn't she do it? Like she definitely knows more about the human body and where to come, you know? But I think also the reason that David becomes the one who who falls apart so fully is that he's the only one who really has to like reckon with the violence and cruelty of their actions. He has a conscience in a certain sense. yeah But also, like, who knows whether he would still have that conscience if it was Alex who was forced to knock out the teeth and cut off the hands and feet. Like, it's like um looking the violence in the face, in my impression, is always what ruins David, is that he's the one who's actually left to clean up the viscera and deal with the actual bodily grotesqueness of the situation. The next thing he does after that scene is they're at a dinner and it's the dinner where Alex gets beat up, I think.
Speaker: And at the dinner, he kind of just clearly wants to talk to them. He's like, we need to have a conversation about this. And they're too busy drinking champagne and whatever. You know, it's like a function at some kind of, for some kind of fundraiser or something. Yes. And what happens is that this like older guy who's been calling Juliet on the phone, Juliet has all these gentlemen suitors who she tests roommates by seeing how good they are picking up the phone and saying she's not home.
Speaker: And what happens is the guy comes over and asks for her to dance with him. And David, who's been totally kind of placid and maybe not placid, but just like not aggressive up to this point in the movie, just gets up and is like, she said she didn't want to fucking dance. Like, yeah get the hell out of here. And it literally earns the respect of, of Hugh McGregor's character. Who's yeah you know, that a boy, basically you're right though. It is the violence, which is funny because it,
Speaker: it almost allows you to have this reading of the movie. and I'm not necessarily suggesting this cause it's, it's not true, but it is fun to think about in the context as like Danny Boyle imagining or like Hodges imagining through the screenplay. What happens if you like actually watched all the video nasties or if you like are a horror movie fan, like what happens if you do just make experiencing extreme violence, like what you do with your time and yeah in the world of the movie, it,
Speaker: I would almost describe it as like an awakening, like because it it doesn't remove his morality immediately. It it leads him to this kind of like paranoia and hyper-moral consciousness almost that then gives way through the paranoia to this lake rapacious willingness to just do horrendous violence, whereas someone like Alex at the end of the movie actually lies to save Juliette.
Speaker: So he, you know, because he says what is he say he says he bought the plane tickets to get away. Oh, you yeah. yeah he Is he trying to save Juliet or is he trying to hurry them out of the apartment so he can be alone with his hidden money?
Speaker: Well, i but we don't know that at the time. I guess you're right. that does But in the moment, the feeling is one of, OK, he has enough humanity left maybe to do this. And of course, he then gets stabbed by Juliet, so it doesn't go very well. But I also love that Juliet, after stabbing him into the floor, well first of all, i'd love that she takes her shoe off and uses it as a hammer night. Yeah, that's so good. Which is just such a wonderful touch, yeah.
Speaker: And then if you actually look at her as she's walking out with the suitcase that she thinks has the money, she's smiling. Yeah. So she's gone fully bad as well by the end of the movie. And so there were two things I wanted to touch on. I don't know how much time we have left. One thing that I found very interesting and also ties into like this changing era and how shallow grave would be partially representative of a future era is that Carrie Fox, the Juliet character, she was a hot commodity on the art house circuit festivals and whatnot. So They only got funding for this movie because Carrie Fox was playing Juliet. Once they cast Carrie Fox, they got a million pounds.
Speaker: um Ewan McGregor and Christopher Eccleston were complete unknowns who were... um like had to like really be tested in front of the studio to prove that they could have these roles in the movie. And then it turns out, you know, Christopher Eccleston goes on to become Dr. Who and Ewan McGregor goes on to be Obi-Wan Kenobi. And it's just like this...
Speaker: wild casting choice where the two unknown males they cast become two of the most defining characters. If you consider television part of motion picture history, then they become two of the biggest characters in the history of motion pictures within the following 10 or 15 years.
Speaker: So there's all these weird things going on behind the scenes as well, where it's like, you know, even Danny Boyle, who it's his first feature. And then he goes on to make maybe four or five more movies with writer John Hodge and maybe four or five movies with producer Andrew McDonald, maybe three movies with Ewan McGregor and two with Christopher Eccleston. So they all...
Speaker: have this little community of artists that are about to become like a powerhouse of world cinema that we're just watching really burgeoning in this movie because they have not been established in any regards when they're making this film.
Speaker: It's very indie moment. Yeah. It's very like, you know, Something that could only really happen then. But yeah. Totally. And and just by good fortune and luck, because that that kind of thing also gives a movie you know legs.
Speaker: If this movie, the only known actor in it in today's day and age was Carrie Fox, I don't necessarily think that it would have quite as much cachet as it does now with Christopher Eccleston and Ewan McGregor being these two you know movie stars who were cast at the beginning of their career.
Speaker: um And another thing I wanted to touch on is how much in certain scenes, especially with the detectives, speaking of the younger detective is the writer, John Hodge. um But with the detectives, how much they're recreating the vibe of Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange.
Speaker: with Alex or David being the Alex DeLarge character. And the detectives are framed and written and directed and edited exactly like a lot of the authority figures in A Clockwork Orange, especially like when the Alex DeLarge in A Clockwork Orange, the principal of his high school, comes and wakes him up from his his nap and And grabs his thigh really tight and is like, why aren't you coming to school anymore, Alex? There's this real throwback homage to the British humor of A Clockwork Orange. Those scenes are very funny, the way the detectives interact with them.
Speaker: um Because it's like they know from the first second that it's these three three people and they just need to prove it, which is a very funny dichotomy. And the way that the senior detective treats the younger one does have, and maybe this is just me doing a little reading into the movie because of what the podcast is about, but there is this sort of like boomer Gen X feeling where the the boomer head detective is sort of like constantly making jokes at the expense of his younger detective because every time that the main characters lie,
Speaker: and say that something is wrong, you know, they'll say, detectives will say, oh, we know there are four people living here. And they'll be like, oh, where did hear that? There are three. And the senior detective will say like, oh, I guess, you know, whatever his name is, the junior detective just doesn't know what to write down. Can't he write? Like, you know, this sort of like bullying of this younger generation who doesn't feel totally comfortable in its role. Like that character, I think, is virtually entirely silent, the Hodge character. Like he might have one line, but his job is to be made fun of by the senior detective.
Speaker: And also, I think it's a little bit of good cop, bad cop as well. So the older detective takes the role of the bad cop and lets the detective that's their age play the the cop who doesn't know any better and isn't really going to get them caught at the end of the day.
Speaker: Yeah, it's a good it's a good point, too, because the version of bad cop here is like so cold and detached. like It's not the rage-filled, you know. ah No. It's very much smirking. It's like a Cheshire cat a little bit. It really, it does have that feeling. I know you got to go. i don't want to keep you any longer because I mean, I know from the many years that we've known each other that this could end up being four hours long anyway. But sometime the wolf, anything else you want to you want to plug while you're here? ah Not really. My first feature, sometime the wolf, I'm going to try and find some small distribution for this year. just try and get it out there in any way that I can.
Speaker: I'm starting to write my second feature, which is This movie, I'm full on leaning into flashiness and style. It's called Shallow Grave 2. Shallow Grave 2, Revenge of the Trainspotter. Shallow to the Grave, yeah.
Speaker: One last thing I want to say about Shallow Grave in case anybody wonders why we didn't touch on any of the Scottishness enough. um One of the opening lines, David in the opening monologue in the first few sentences says, this takes place in Edinburgh, but it doesn't matter.
Speaker: It could have happened in any city. They're all the same. So I think that while it takes place in Scotland, I think it is slightly detached from... making any big points about a Scottish culture in that period or anything, and is more just the writers writing the town near where he grew up.
Speaker: And it's not as relevant as just the concept of three young professionals trying to make ends meet in a big city, which is that Gen X attitude or Gen X problem.
Speaker: It's a good point because it does put you in this position of or it reinforces this idea that it's this general feeling that society is experiencing that might have a particular manifestation in Scotland and look a little different there, but that there is this like globalization of culture that makes it possible for this to happen literally anywhere. so Yes, totally.
Speaker: With that, ah thank you, Will, William Garcia Bigelow, sometime the wolf. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me, Chase. Still just me. Sorry. Sam is out exploring the world. He has a real job. He has real responsibilities.
Speaker: We just finished talking with my good buddy, William Garcia Bigelow, about Danny Boyle's shallow grave. You already know that. I just wanted to remind you, like, rate, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, which doesn't exist anymore, wherever you can find us.
Speaker: Send me a little DM. Tell me you love me. Tell me you hate me. Email us at deathphotopod at gmail.com. We love hearing from you. And most of all, ah pay that $1,000 sub. Head on over to patreon.com slash deathphotopod.
Speaker: Sam, we miss you. We love you. Will, thank you so much. Death is a photograph. Culture at the end of history.
