Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
PGW 26: Pod Save MEGALOPOLIS + THE SUBSTANCE
5 Plays1 year ago
Francis Ford Coppola has brought us a new film, is it a masterpiece? Is it trash? Is it better than SOUTHLAND TALES?! Who knows. We also take some time to discuss Coralie Fargeat's new film THE SUBSTANCE and outline our October.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Light-hearted Banter
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to Paddington Godwild, the internet's only podcast powered by Megalon.
00:00:06
Speaker
I'm one of your hosts and the Claudio Poulter of this show, Red Rankin.
00:00:10
Speaker
Joined, as always, by my illustrious co-host, PULTURE FOR THE CULTURE!
00:00:14
Speaker
PULTURE FOR THE CULTURE.
00:00:17
Speaker
Our very own Wow Platinum, Zach.
00:00:20
Speaker
I knew it.
00:00:21
Speaker
I knew he was going to do Zach's Wow Platinum.
00:00:23
Speaker
It had to be.
00:00:25
Speaker
The funding Romaine of this show, Joe.
00:00:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:00:29
Speaker
And Nush Berman played by Austin.
00:00:32
Speaker
Yeah, baby.
00:00:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:00:33
Speaker
I love a statue.
00:00:34
Speaker
It's a movie filled with cinema's finest abusers.
00:00:37
Speaker
Yeah, it's pretty wild.
00:00:40
Speaker
Whoa, wait a second.
00:00:42
Speaker
Larry Fishburne, not an abuser.
00:00:44
Speaker
He's plenty of abusers.
00:00:45
Speaker
There's a lot of people who aren't abusers, but there's also a lot that are.
00:00:50
Speaker
Very briefly.
00:00:51
Speaker
I'm sorry, go ahead, Joe.
00:00:53
Speaker
Very briefly, I have to tell a Lawrence Fishburne story.
00:00:56
Speaker
My father is sitting in a restaurant in Atlanta that is called The Varsity.
00:01:00
Speaker
It's a super classic place that people go to.
00:01:02
Speaker
It's on North Avenue.
00:01:04
Speaker
It's right across the highway from Georgia Tech.
00:01:07
Speaker
It's like chili dogs and, you know, like frosted oranges and onion rings.
00:01:11
Speaker
John Cougar Mellencamp style.
00:01:12
Speaker
I've been to the airport version.
00:01:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:15
Speaker
There's also one in Athens.
00:01:16
Speaker
But my dad is sitting at the varsity because he used to work downtown.
00:01:20
Speaker
And he's sitting at the varsity and he's like at a counter.
00:01:25
Speaker
And he's sitting next to this guy and he goes, dude, I fucking know you.
00:01:30
Speaker
He's like, like, where the fuck are you from?
00:01:32
Speaker
And he's like, oh, well, you know, I kind of grew up all over and I, you know, I live in LA now, but I'm here for work.
00:01:38
Speaker
And my dad's like, what the fuck?
00:01:40
Speaker
He's like, he's like, have you ever like lived in this place?
00:01:42
Speaker
You ever lived in this place?
00:01:43
Speaker
Like, do you know these people?
00:01:44
Speaker
And he's like, nope, nope, nope.
00:01:46
Speaker
And my dad goes,
00:01:48
Speaker
Motherfucker, I knew it.
00:01:49
Speaker
You're Ike Turner.
00:01:50
Speaker
I'm referring to Lawrence Fishburne, who played Ike Turner.
00:01:55
Speaker
Speaking of Larry Fishburne playing an abuser.
00:01:59
Speaker
That's really funny.
00:02:00
Speaker
Knowing Lawrence Fishburne from playing Ike Turner is really funny.
00:02:04
Speaker
That's a really good answer.
00:02:05
Speaker
My dad was living in the 90s.
00:02:06
Speaker
The Matrix had not come out yet.
00:02:07
Speaker
Oh.
00:02:07
Speaker
Okay.
00:02:08
Speaker
It was like when a man loves a woman was his...
00:02:11
Speaker
so he didn't know him from fucking uh deep cover deep cover my old man so good movies he is king of new york yeah he has not seen deep cover hey he's the best i love fishburn he's great in this movie he he really is i really wish at one point that he looked in the camera and did the line from john wick where he goes somebody get this man a gun
00:02:37
Speaker
It could have worked.
00:02:38
Speaker
Honest to God, it would have fit in context of this movie.
00:02:41
Speaker
That's the thing about this movie.
00:02:42
Speaker
Everything fits.
00:02:43
Speaker
Everything fits.
00:02:45
Speaker
Because it truly has everything.
00:02:47
Speaker
We're talking about Mega Fucking Lopolis directed by Francis Ford Coppola who we're not going to get into anything outside of the film today.
00:02:58
Speaker
Mega-la-la-la-la-lopolis.
Megalopolis: Star-studded Cast and Plot Discussion
00:03:00
Speaker
If it's a boy, we shall name him Francis.
00:03:02
Speaker
That was so fucking funny.
00:03:08
Speaker
It is the most movie movie I have ever seen.
00:03:11
Speaker
They packed in so much movie into this.
00:03:15
Speaker
But before we get to it, I will give you a quick, maybe less than quick plot synopsis.
00:03:20
Speaker
You're just going to have to fucking throw shit at the wall and see if that happened.
00:03:24
Speaker
Honestly, you could say something and I would believe I saw the movie last night and you could say something that wasn't in the movie and I go, I probably was in there.
00:03:30
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like I have a pretty good recall of it, but also no idea.
00:03:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:36
Speaker
So.
00:03:37
Speaker
Megalopolis, the city of New Rome, is the main conflict between... Sorry, just reading the names makes me laugh.
00:03:42
Speaker
Eric Adams, New Rome.
00:03:45
Speaker
Catalina, played by Adam Driver, a brilliant artist in favor of a utopian future, and the greedy mayor, Frank Cicero, played by Giancarlo Esposito.
00:03:54
Speaker
Between them is Julia Cicero, Frank's daughter, played by Natalie Emanuel.
00:03:58
Speaker
Her loyalty is divided between her father and her beloved.
00:04:01
Speaker
We are also blessed with a cavalcade of insane performances from a massive cast.
00:04:05
Speaker
Dustin Hoffman, John Voight, Lawrence Fishburne, Shia LaBeouf, Aubrey Plaza, Talia Shire, Jason Schwartzman, and Catherine Hunter.
00:04:12
Speaker
Just to name a handful, there's still more people I have to name.
00:04:14
Speaker
Just to name a few, for real.
00:04:15
Speaker
James Remar.
00:04:16
Speaker
There's like a bunch of fucking people.
00:04:18
Speaker
Yeah, Remar's just chilling.
00:04:22
Speaker
Yeah, so that's kind of what happens in that movie.
00:04:24
Speaker
Kind of.
00:04:25
Speaker
Those people show up.
00:04:27
Speaker
Jon Voight's playing with Hamilton Crassus.
00:04:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:31
Speaker
Hamilton Crassus III.
00:04:32
Speaker
Jon Voight is Robin Hood.
00:04:34
Speaker
Jon Voight is Robin Hood.
00:04:36
Speaker
And Aubrey Plaza is WoW Platinum.
00:04:38
Speaker
Aubrey Plaza is what I mean.
00:04:42
Speaker
Genuinely, maybe my favorite joke of the year when they're at the weird gladiatorial ring.
00:04:49
Speaker
And she's like, how did you get that name?
00:04:51
Speaker
Wow, platinum.
00:04:52
Speaker
She's like, I picked it up on the side of the highway.
00:04:54
Speaker
I thought that was so funny.
00:04:56
Speaker
That made me laugh so hard.
00:04:58
Speaker
The one that made me laugh the hardest is when Julia Cicero comes into Adam Driver's office and he goes, and so you go back to the clubs.
00:05:08
Speaker
And he does this The first time she comes to the office Oh my gosh Actually from that same scene The most inexplicable thing happens Where for half of a second Adam Driver holds up a copy of Herman Hesse's Siddhartha Yeah Siddhartha just from his bag He just pulls it up and goes It looks like a Wes Anderson like bit It does look like yeah like a weird Wes Anderson insert shot They're
00:05:39
Speaker
I don't know how we talk about it.
00:05:40
Speaker
I really don't either.
00:05:41
Speaker
I don't know where to start with it either.
00:05:43
Speaker
Listener, I explained I texted the boys last night.
00:05:45
Speaker
We were recording this on Sunday, the day before the pod's going to come out.
00:05:48
Speaker
Might come out on Tuesday.
00:05:49
Speaker
Who fucking cares?
00:05:50
Speaker
Because frankly, I don't know if anybody is going to see this goddamn flick.
00:05:55
Speaker
I've been telling everybody to go see it.
00:05:57
Speaker
I think that everyone needs to see it just for the fact that it is maybe the most batshit insane movie I've seen in a long time.
00:06:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:04
Speaker
Yeah, so I mean it's the most we dared dive into like let's start question of and I don't know I don't know like I don't know where to fucking start.
00:06:13
Speaker
Let's just yeah everybody just go around and just say what everybody think red.
00:06:17
Speaker
Let's start with you.
00:06:17
Speaker
We never start with you.
00:06:19
Speaker
Um, I I have some notes
00:06:25
Speaker
You have to refer to the notes because what else are you going to do?
00:06:28
Speaker
I did.
00:06:28
Speaker
And honestly, I started to write out pages of notes, and then I was like, I think these pages of notes are ultimately just me saying what I'm about to say.
00:06:38
Speaker
I saw Austin on Friday, a dear friend of the pod, our buddy Davis Mislosky is in town with his girlfriend.
00:06:44
Speaker
Saw them, and Austin and I were having a conversation because we had both seen it that day.
00:06:49
Speaker
I left the screening of Megalopolis and went straight to the bar to see Austin.
00:06:54
Speaker
And...
00:06:57
Speaker
It is unlike any film I have ever seen.
00:07:03
Speaker
I referenced Malcolm X in the group chat recently talking about it being a film that was unlike anything I'd ever seen.
00:07:11
Speaker
And it was one of the first times as a person who wasn't quite a cinephile, like seeing something and being like, I've never seen that before.
00:07:17
Speaker
And now...
00:07:19
Speaker
I'm a decade older and I have seen thousands of films and films from some of the great masters.
00:07:25
Speaker
And yet it's hard these days to feel like I'm watching something that I have never seen before.
00:07:32
Speaker
And yet,
00:07:34
Speaker
I walked out of, you know, Francis Ford Coppola's newest film and I was like, you know, there's a bunch of shit in there that I have never experienced, never thought about.
00:07:46
Speaker
Both for good and bad.
00:07:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:48
Speaker
This movie has so much bad in it.
00:07:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:52
Speaker
Like an insane amount of bad shit in it.
00:07:55
Speaker
And yet.
00:07:58
Speaker
Brother, I... It was a great time in the movies.
00:08:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:03
Speaker
I'll go, Nick.
00:08:04
Speaker
I think I love this movie.
00:08:07
Speaker
I can't say why.
00:08:09
Speaker
I was talking to some friends about it last night because I was describing the character of Wow Platinum.
00:08:15
Speaker
And I was like...
00:08:17
Speaker
It's like a $125 million student film.
00:08:21
Speaker
Like it's just somebody who has all of their ideas and they're like, I want to see all of this on screen.
00:08:28
Speaker
So I'm just going to do it and fuck it.
00:08:30
Speaker
I don't care.
00:08:32
Speaker
And I don't care if it cuts together and I don't care if like it makes any sense, but some of it's going to look fucking awesome.
00:08:39
Speaker
And it's going to have Adam driver doing a Hamlet monologue and it's going to have like,
00:08:45
Speaker
Yeah, new Rome and, you know, like Shia LaBeouf wearing crazy makeup and trying to
Artistic Depth of Megalopolis: Meaningful or Bizarre?
00:08:54
Speaker
fuck his stepmother.
00:08:55
Speaker
Like, fuck, not trying, actually, accomplishing.
00:09:00
Speaker
He closed the deal, sister.
00:09:01
Speaker
He did.
00:09:02
Speaker
He sealed the deal.
00:09:04
Speaker
Auntie, wow.
00:09:05
Speaker
But I...
00:09:09
Speaker
I totally agree with you, Red.
00:09:10
Speaker
I've never seen anything like it.
00:09:13
Speaker
And I just had so much fun.
00:09:17
Speaker
After we all go around, I want you all to guess the moment that the people walked out in my screening.
00:09:24
Speaker
after.
00:09:24
Speaker
I feel like we all think it's the anti-wow scene.
00:09:26
Speaker
It is the anti-wow scene.
00:09:28
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, there was no chance in hell that it wasn't do you want to fuck me?
00:09:33
Speaker
Yes, anti-wow, I want to fuck you so bad.
00:09:35
Speaker
There's a line where the power starts going out and she goes, what is it?
00:09:40
Speaker
And then he goes, that's your pussy, anti-wow.
00:09:42
Speaker
And she was like, no, I'm not talking about that.
00:09:44
Speaker
No, not that.
00:09:47
Speaker
I cackled in the theater.
00:09:50
Speaker
It's very funny.
00:09:52
Speaker
I don't think it's a good movie.
00:09:54
Speaker
Like, I don't.
00:09:57
Speaker
And I'm like, that's not signaling any amount of, like, how much I enjoyed it or not.
00:10:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:04
Speaker
I am really tired.
00:10:06
Speaker
And we can jump into this.
00:10:08
Speaker
I don't know how y'all feel about this note.
00:10:10
Speaker
But...
00:10:11
Speaker
I'm really tired of people defending it as like this grand artistic achievement of like something carrying depth that I do not think it carries at all, because I think the movie is best embodied by the fact that towards the end of the movie, they employ a quote unquote Marcus Aurelius quote that is not from Marcus Aurelius.
00:10:32
Speaker
attributed to like this pursuit of greatness and I think creating a quote attributed to a stoic to bring depth to something that I think lacks it in a lot of ways that it thinks it has it it's just there's no better way to like summarize this movie of just like man they sure fucking went for it I don't know how much of like the stuff is there
00:10:55
Speaker
We have my, Davis's girlfriend was like, a zero to 10, what would you give it?
00:10:59
Speaker
And I said, fish.
00:11:00
Speaker
I was like, I don't know.
00:11:01
Speaker
There's no way to rate it.
00:11:02
Speaker
There's no way to rate it.
00:11:03
Speaker
Like, it doesn't exist on the normal spectrum.
00:11:07
Speaker
I really enjoyed it.
00:11:08
Speaker
I don't know how much of my enjoyment was the same reason I enjoyed Southland Tales.
00:11:14
Speaker
It's similar.
00:11:15
Speaker
Very similar films.
00:11:16
Speaker
Very, very.
00:11:17
Speaker
But yeah, I had a fun time.
00:11:19
Speaker
I've never seen more people walk out of a screening like genuinely.
00:11:22
Speaker
Like I saw people talking about that.
00:11:24
Speaker
But yeah, people were walking out.
00:11:26
Speaker
I have people walk out of my screening.
00:11:28
Speaker
Yeah, dude.
00:11:29
Speaker
I don't know what's happening.
00:11:31
Speaker
Immediately after I finished the movie, I texted Adam and I said, Adam, this was Francis Ford Coppola's Southland Tales.
00:11:42
Speaker
But then I said...
00:11:43
Speaker
It barely makes sense.
00:11:44
Speaker
The internal logic of the story is barely held together scene to scene.
00:11:48
Speaker
Everybody's acting like they're in a fucking cartoon.
00:11:50
Speaker
The metaphor is so insanely on the nose, it transcends subtlety.
00:11:54
Speaker
It looks like it was computer generated in the 90s.
00:11:56
Speaker
And yet I legitimately cried on the way home.
00:12:02
Speaker
And this is why you are one of the great voices in podcasting.
00:12:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:08
Speaker
I can't describe the unbridled joy I got at watching what was basically if Tommy Wiseau had inherent talent and
00:12:18
Speaker
Dude, yes.
00:12:19
Speaker
And infinite money.
00:12:21
Speaker
Because there's shots in this movie that are fucking transcendent.
00:12:26
Speaker
That scene where they're kissing over the city where they're standing on the beams, on the scaffolding, yeah, that shot was beautiful.
00:12:35
Speaker
It's one of my favorite uses of the volume in recent history because they didn't try to make it look real.
00:12:39
Speaker
It's got Adam Driver giving...
00:12:46
Speaker
I describe it to Matty as he is delivering these lines with the earnesty of a guy in the middle of nowhere, Oklahoma, who loves Shakespeare doing Shakespeare in the park.
00:12:59
Speaker
Just someone who thinks I got it.
00:13:02
Speaker
He has the whole thing on his back.
00:13:04
Speaker
And he's like trying so hard to carry it.
00:13:06
Speaker
And honestly, his performance is magnificent.
00:13:09
Speaker
He's so fucking good.
00:13:11
Speaker
He's so good.
00:13:12
Speaker
He's the only reason anything in it works for me.
00:13:16
Speaker
He holds it together like glue.
00:13:18
Speaker
Him and Coppola were fucking like just like on the same wave.
00:13:22
Speaker
And this is another thing about a movie like this.
00:13:25
Speaker
It's so hard to say that this movie is good that I don't know if I can.
00:13:30
Speaker
Like Brian, my friend asked me, I just said, oh my God.
00:13:34
Speaker
Cause I said, I'm going in to see Megalopolis.
00:13:36
Speaker
And then I said, oh my God, three hours later.
00:13:38
Speaker
And he was like, good or bad.
00:13:39
Speaker
And I was like, I don't know.
00:13:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:42
Speaker
I don't know.
00:13:42
Speaker
Telling.
00:13:44
Speaker
It's probably one of my favorite movies of the year.
00:13:46
Speaker
And it's definitely my favorite movie of the year that I think isn't very good.
00:13:53
Speaker
I currently have it number eight on my list.
00:13:55
Speaker
I don't know where to put it on my list because it could be three and it could be 30.
00:14:01
Speaker
Yeah, I put it in a weird place too.
00:14:03
Speaker
Because again, I don't feel like I can bring myself to say this movie is good.
00:14:10
Speaker
But at the end of the day, I'm just like judging on my own metrics.
00:14:13
Speaker
I guess just like I had such a good time seeing this movie and it will stick with me forever.
00:14:19
Speaker
Here's the.
00:14:19
Speaker
Did you appreciate what the movie was earnestly saying by pledging allegiance to humanity?
00:14:25
Speaker
It's so fucking funny, man.
00:14:27
Speaker
It's hilarious.
00:14:27
Speaker
That's hilarious, but it's not supposed to be.
00:14:30
Speaker
Maybe it is.
00:14:31
Speaker
No, but I do appreciate the earnestness.
00:14:35
Speaker
Whether or not I think its message is good is whatever.
00:14:39
Speaker
But it is the most earnest, honest movie ever made.
00:14:44
Speaker
Like it's like there's no because he had no filter.
00:14:48
Speaker
He had nobody telling him what to do.
00:14:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:50
Speaker
It's an interesting thing.
00:14:51
Speaker
Zach, you brought up that there is a supreme lack of depth.
00:14:54
Speaker
And I think that there's so many ideas here that you would imagine that there would be depth.
00:14:59
Speaker
But the problem is, is that Coppola has just laid them all out on the surface.
00:15:05
Speaker
So it's a film that is, I mean, as deep as a puddle of water because all of the ideas are just right here.
00:15:12
Speaker
The depth is red.
00:15:13
Speaker
A puddle of water can reflect the sky.
00:15:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:17
Speaker
What did you say, Zach?
00:15:18
Speaker
I'm sorry.
00:15:18
Speaker
You can also drown in a puddle of water.
00:15:20
Speaker
I said the depth is just name dropping the syllabus for an English literature class.
00:15:24
Speaker
Sure.
00:15:26
Speaker
And also, here's the thing.
00:15:27
Speaker
I don't think the movie needs to be depth because it is just a self-insert Coppola movie.
00:15:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:35
Speaker
The depth of the movie rides on you being willing to get on its wavelength and you being willing to read into it.
00:15:45
Speaker
Like, like the moment that I teared up in the movie was when it was the montage where Adam Driver was like having the time of his life after he and Julia finally got together.
00:15:56
Speaker
And he's just like creating and saying fucking nonsense architecture jargon.
00:16:01
Speaker
Like one of my favorite lines from the movie is he goes, what if the what if the thing that carries the power also stores it?
00:16:09
Speaker
And the guy goes, that's a great idea.
00:16:10
Speaker
And he goes, thank you.
00:16:12
Speaker
That's a battery.
00:16:13
Speaker
I was like, that doesn't make any sense.
00:16:14
Speaker
That's a battery.
00:16:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:16
Speaker
You've created a battery.
00:16:17
Speaker
Can we quickly talk about, there's so many moments to talk about.
00:16:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:24
Speaker
I do just want to say, I find it so interesting.
00:16:28
Speaker
that all of us have compared this film to Southland Tales, both anecdotally and on this podcast.
00:16:34
Speaker
And yet, right now, the two people who are the most positive on it are, one, the person who brought us to Southland Tales, Joe, and Austin, who... I hate Southland Tales.
00:16:43
Speaker
I'm so sorry.
00:16:44
Speaker
like was in a shouting match about Southland Tales.
00:16:47
Speaker
I was thinking about that before we recorded because I saw that Austin had liked the movie on Letterboxd and my thoughts were so connected to Southland Tales after watching this movie that I was like, like I was almost mad about it.
00:16:59
Speaker
What?
00:17:01
Speaker
I almost wanted to come into this like ready to yell at Austin like you stupid fucker you cannot hate this and love this like I don't know the fuck I want first of all yes and that's why I did not come into this podcast doing that it reflects me there's something there's something
00:17:18
Speaker
I've been trying to clarify what's different.
00:17:21
Speaker
First of all, I think I just like all the performers in this more than like the performers in Southampton.
00:17:25
Speaker
That's a base level sort of thing.
00:17:27
Speaker
But Adam Driver is like my number one guy.
00:17:29
Speaker
So that's a huge deal.
00:17:31
Speaker
That's a huge part of it.
00:17:32
Speaker
And Voight.
00:17:32
Speaker
You love John Voight.
00:17:34
Speaker
Well, I don't love his acting career, but I love his personal life.
00:17:39
Speaker
Yeah, like me and Dave Grohl.
00:17:41
Speaker
I hate his music.
00:17:41
Speaker
I love his romantic history.
00:17:42
Speaker
I love the infidelity.
00:17:44
Speaker
The music is dog shit.
00:17:45
Speaker
The music is dog shit.
00:17:47
Speaker
Yeah, I love Trump supporters who give birth to the most beautiful woman who ever lived.
00:17:53
Speaker
He gave birth to her.
00:17:54
Speaker
Average SEC school.
00:17:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:58
Speaker
But I don't know.
00:17:59
Speaker
There's, again, I think it's like, now to be fair, like I hate Southland Tales.
00:18:06
Speaker
That doesn't mean it hasn't stuck with me.
00:18:08
Speaker
Like I have thought about it a lot since I watched it.
00:18:11
Speaker
It grabs onto you like a tick.
00:18:14
Speaker
It is sticky.
00:18:15
Speaker
And so like, I just think it, I think it is doing a lot of the same things.
00:18:20
Speaker
It just doesn't work in the same way for me.
00:18:22
Speaker
I don't know.
00:18:22
Speaker
I can't really qualify why that is.
00:18:25
Speaker
I think it's also just that like,
00:18:27
Speaker
There to me in this movie, I swear there are scenes where you can see money burning in the background.
00:18:34
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:18:34
Speaker
Like he's setting dollars on fire.
00:18:37
Speaker
And you're just like, that's the movie.
00:18:39
Speaker
And he understands that.
00:18:41
Speaker
He understands that what he's doing is...
00:18:44
Speaker
is taking everything and burning it.
00:18:47
Speaker
Everything he's ever earned and made.
00:18:49
Speaker
And that's awesome that he understands that.
00:18:53
Speaker
That's why I want to be gentler on it than I would be otherwise.
00:18:58
Speaker
If this was a studio production, I would be shitting all over it.
00:19:02
Speaker
The context is so important for this.
00:19:04
Speaker
The context does add to that earnesty that the movie is looking to accomplish.
00:19:08
Speaker
And I guess it does accomplish the earnesty, even if not accomplishing the scenes.
00:19:14
Speaker
There is a film criticism theory called neoformalism.
00:19:18
Speaker
It's David Bordwell and Kristen Thompson.
00:19:21
Speaker
They kind of literally wrote the book on this theory.
00:19:24
Speaker
It's brilliant, by the way.
00:19:27
Speaker
You should read it.
00:19:27
Speaker
But the theory basically states that films are made up of choices.
00:19:34
Speaker
And you can recognize a choice working for the film, even if you think it's bad.
00:19:42
Speaker
And so a lot of people refuse to get on a movie of a movie like this is wavelength by going.
00:19:48
Speaker
This is weird to me, like the shot where Aubrey Plaza's head is in like the like the water, the puddle or whatever.
00:19:55
Speaker
And it's like spinning around as she's mesmerizing Shia LaBeouf's character.
00:20:02
Speaker
Like, yeah, sure.
00:20:03
Speaker
That's a weird shot.
00:20:05
Speaker
And but also you have to understand the fact that every single bit of this movie is a choice because, you know, Francis Ford Coppola directed The Godfather.
00:20:16
Speaker
He directed The Godfather.
00:20:17
Speaker
He directed Apocalypse Now.
00:20:19
Speaker
He is a he is a world class director.
00:20:23
Speaker
So when he makes a movie like this with batshit insane choices, they weren't an accident and they weren't a mistake.
00:20:30
Speaker
But the weird thing is, I feel like the batshit insane choices are what held the movie together in a weird way.
00:20:35
Speaker
That's what I'm saying.
00:20:36
Speaker
What threw me off is going from the cool Artur shots to a very flat-looking volume shot of dialogue.
00:20:46
Speaker
Just the juxtaposition of that.
00:20:48
Speaker
It's such a fascinating thing, even, to think about the use of the volume.
00:20:51
Speaker
Because there are shots in the volume that are, like Joe brought up, there are shots in the volume that look really interesting because they are...
00:20:59
Speaker
The shot on the girders, a use of the volume, and when they're on that giant clock.
00:21:03
Speaker
To me, I was like, this is really interesting because it reminds me of some of the shots in The Matrix Resurrections of, like, very intentionally as we are shooting this in a way not to be like, here's this perfect skyline.
00:21:14
Speaker
Like, it's a choice.
00:21:15
Speaker
But then there's other instances of the use of the volume where it's just standard dialogue where it's like, what the fuck are we doing here?
00:21:21
Speaker
And I think like for me, and I don't know about you guys, my favorite sequence of the film is the Coliseum sequence.
00:21:28
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:21:29
Speaker
What what driver is doing in all of that.
00:21:32
Speaker
And that one sequence and really just what's happening with driver in it, because it's so.
00:21:40
Speaker
over the top, weird, interesting, so many choices.
00:21:44
Speaker
Incredibly physical.
00:21:45
Speaker
Incredibly physical.
00:21:47
Speaker
He's acting his fucking ass off in that scene.
00:21:50
Speaker
I was like, this is amazing.
00:21:52
Speaker
There's not a single other moment in the film that I thought was amazing, but it's such a... I think you guys are... I sound like I'm just trying to like...
00:22:02
Speaker
quiet down any dissent but i think you're all right to a certain degree well that's my thing is you can't tell anybody they're wrong about their feelings about this movie if you thought it was dog shit i get it yeah for real like yeah i i can't say like i just can't like for instance there's that there's that really extended sequence where grace vanderwall sings a song about her purity pledge yeah
00:22:26
Speaker
As she's descending from the ceiling.
00:22:28
Speaker
Pretending to be an underage virgin.
00:22:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:30
Speaker
Yes.
00:22:30
Speaker
She's pretending to be an underage virgin.
00:22:33
Speaker
And then for only 30 seconds after she gets revealed to actually be 23 and not a virgin, there's a shot where it's like, oh, she's doing an Olivia Rodrigo thing.
00:22:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:47
Speaker
And then there's a mob of people with hats that say.
00:22:50
Speaker
Yeah, it was very JoJo Siwa coded.
00:22:52
Speaker
There's a there's a mob of people that have hats that say make Rome great again.
00:22:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:56
Speaker
Which is so literally.
00:22:59
Speaker
It's so very very.
00:23:01
Speaker
And John Boyd's in the movie.
00:23:03
Speaker
Shia LaBeouf climbs on a swastika at one point.
00:23:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:06
Speaker
A swastika cut out of a tree.
00:23:08
Speaker
I literally went, oh God.
00:23:10
Speaker
He literally tattoos on his forehead a symbol that had been used by the Nazi party and was a big part of Hitler's occult programs.
00:23:21
Speaker
It's like...
00:23:22
Speaker
I thought that character was so funny.
00:23:25
Speaker
The guy who they pull out of the band and he just becomes their fourth sibling.
00:23:30
Speaker
So many things happen that have no context or follow through.
00:23:33
Speaker
Where you're just like, okay.
00:23:35
Speaker
Oh, we're moving on.
00:23:35
Speaker
In the moment they pull him out of the band, they're like, which way did he go?
00:23:39
Speaker
Okay, we're going this way.
00:23:40
Speaker
Yeah, the band leader.
00:23:42
Speaker
It's very funny.
00:23:43
Speaker
I sound like he's from Mississippi for no reason.
00:23:45
Speaker
I guess we're going this way.
00:23:47
Speaker
I think that is the finger on the pulse of the reason why I love this movie so much is because I just couldn't predict where it was going.
00:23:54
Speaker
And I guarantee you if I went again, I still would get confused.
00:23:58
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:23:59
Speaker
So, like, I believe that the moment where...
00:24:01
Speaker
That guy leaves and they say, which way did he go?
00:24:03
Speaker
We're going this way.
00:24:04
Speaker
Like that was that was supposed to be funny for sure.
00:24:07
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:24:07
Speaker
But I don't know if it was supposed to be kind of funny that in this like deep moment of learning how to like see this vision for the future that she was walking across a table of storage closet content with her eyes closed.
00:24:21
Speaker
Just like.
00:24:22
Speaker
Trash cans and weird shit across the plastic table.
00:24:26
Speaker
And visualizing what looked like what seemed to me like AI-generated imagery.
00:24:32
Speaker
There's so much shit that looks AI-generated.
00:24:34
Speaker
It looked like one of the cities from an iSpy book.
00:24:38
Speaker
Yeah, that's right.
00:24:39
Speaker
The actual city of Megalopolis looked so fucking stupid I can't even fathom.
00:24:45
Speaker
It looks so dumb.
00:24:47
Speaker
It looks like a baby from the 50s idea of what the future will look like.
00:24:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:54
Speaker
Like a baby who can't fully form thoughts watch the Jetsons and then you ask them to draw the city.
00:25:00
Speaker
Yeah, that sounds about right.
00:25:02
Speaker
I texted a friend of me in Red's yesterday because he asked what we thought about the movie and I didn't want to share my thoughts with Red yet because I wanted to come in here as blind as possible.
00:25:11
Speaker
And I told him, I was like, it was one of the worst movies.
00:25:14
Speaker
And I don't stand by that anymore because it's just so complex.
00:25:19
Speaker
I still don't know how I feel about a lot of it.
00:25:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:23
Speaker
I do think the delivery of the plot is one of the worst executions.
00:25:26
Speaker
Oh, it's terrible.
00:25:27
Speaker
It's awful.
00:25:29
Speaker
As a piece of art.
00:25:30
Speaker
And on one hand, I really hate this.
00:25:33
Speaker
But on the other hand, I understand.
00:25:36
Speaker
But there's someone on Twitter that was like, I don't understand why we can't treat movies the same way we do museums.
00:25:41
Speaker
You don't go to a museum strictly to be entertained and fed something.
00:25:46
Speaker
Yet we expect that out of movies, which also claim to be art.
00:25:50
Speaker
And while I think that person is somewhat pretentious for comparing what most people just turn on their TV when they get home from work to a museum experience, there is something to be said about that.
00:26:03
Speaker
Some movies are like that, though.
00:26:04
Speaker
You don't watch fucking The Tree of Life to be entertained.
00:26:08
Speaker
No.
00:26:09
Speaker
It's not an entertaining movie.
00:26:10
Speaker
You have to think about it.
00:26:11
Speaker
Yeah, it's like Norman Rockwell.
00:26:13
Speaker
Most movies are like Norman Rockwell.
00:26:15
Speaker
It's like, this is what we think of as art.
00:26:17
Speaker
And then like this movie is like a weird, like multi-format piece that has like shit poking out of it and like somebody's arm and also like a dog.
00:26:30
Speaker
And like, it's just like, it's everything all at once.
00:26:33
Speaker
It's not, it just doesn't, it's not conventional in any way.
00:26:36
Speaker
But it's still art.
00:26:38
Speaker
It's really interesting you say that.
00:26:40
Speaker
Maybe we should make a movie about how there's everything everywhere.
00:26:45
Speaker
All at once.
00:26:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:48
Speaker
I don't really like that movie that much.
00:26:49
Speaker
I don't either.
00:26:49
Speaker
One of the things that I came away with this movie thinking is that it feels like listening to a Daniel Johnston album.
00:26:57
Speaker
Sure.
00:26:58
Speaker
That's a good call.
00:27:00
Speaker
Like Walking the Cow is a song that doesn't seem at surface level to have any lyrical depth.
00:27:11
Speaker
But you listen and you're listening to this artist's
00:27:17
Speaker
who doesn't have the greatest idea of how to play his instrument, and he can't really sing that well, but at the same time, he's singing with so much heart and earnestness that you feel it.
00:27:30
Speaker
And that's kind of what I felt about Megalopolis, is that, yeah, sure, there's shots in this that look terrible.
00:27:35
Speaker
There's also shots in this that looked fucking cool as shit.
00:27:38
Speaker
Like in the fucking dinner party scene at the Coliseum when the camera just keeps like dutching back and forth.
00:27:44
Speaker
I loved that shit.
00:27:45
Speaker
But also there's, you know, just like random cutaways that look like I shot it on my phone.
00:27:53
Speaker
Joe, I kind of...
00:28:01
Speaker
It's an interesting thought.
00:28:02
Speaker
I think that the difference for me between this and something like a Daniel Johnston album or a Blaze Foley record or any of these guys who make music that it, the longer you listen, the more you discover is I don't, and maybe, and I'm willing to be
Comparing Coppola's Career to Iconic Moments
00:28:14
Speaker
wrong.
00:28:14
Speaker
We can document it right now.
00:28:16
Speaker
It is September 29th of 2024.
00:28:19
Speaker
I might rewatch Megalopolis and I might come back and be like, late period masterpiece.
00:28:23
Speaker
He solved it.
00:28:24
Speaker
He figured it out.
00:28:26
Speaker
But I, the interesting thing is I think that like a Daniel Johnston record,
00:28:32
Speaker
really rewards more and more time with it.
00:28:36
Speaker
I'm going to watch this movie once a year, I think.
00:28:38
Speaker
You discover the depth.
00:28:40
Speaker
Whereas for me, I feel like everything is just on the surface here.
00:28:45
Speaker
It's the very clear thing of he spends so much time focused on his self-insert character, literally naming the self-insert after himself.
00:28:58
Speaker
And then, or rather the offspring of the self insert.
00:29:01
Speaker
And then like, this feels very clearly a movie that was made by a guy whose wife was dying and then died before the film came out.
00:29:08
Speaker
That's what I'm saying.
00:29:09
Speaker
Like it's, the depth isn't in the film.
00:29:12
Speaker
The depth is in the outside reading of the film.
00:29:14
Speaker
Like if you, if you don't know who Daniel Johnson is, you don't think that you don't, you're not going to listen to that.
00:29:20
Speaker
The context is everything.
00:29:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:22
Speaker
Very fair.
00:29:22
Speaker
Right.
00:29:23
Speaker
If you don't know who Rothko is and what his art means, you're going to look at a Rothko and go, this is a fucking red square.
00:29:29
Speaker
I'm going to put red on blast here.
00:29:31
Speaker
If you don't like Rothko, you can kill yourself.
00:29:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:33
Speaker
I'm going to put red on blast because he said in a group chat that the fact that Francis Ford Coppola doesn't change the impact of this movie, the fact that he made it, and that's just not true.
00:29:45
Speaker
You're right.
00:29:46
Speaker
You're right.
00:29:46
Speaker
That's very fair.
00:29:47
Speaker
This movie is Frank.
00:29:48
Speaker
Get his ass.
00:29:49
Speaker
It's his soul.
00:29:50
Speaker
It is.
00:29:50
Speaker
Is Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis a fable?
00:29:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:55
Speaker
That honestly, more movies should do that.
00:29:57
Speaker
Cause you can get away with a ton more shit.
00:29:59
Speaker
If you just tell me at the beginning, it's a fable.
00:30:01
Speaker
And also have Lawrence Fishburne narrating it.
00:30:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:04
Speaker
Deadpool versus Wolverine.
00:30:06
Speaker
A fable.
00:30:07
Speaker
I, uh, I saw Adam driver in a play on Broadway a couple of years ago.
00:30:11
Speaker
And, uh, he played, it was this play called burn this to Lanford Wilson play about, um, this like guy who's a dancer who dies.
00:30:21
Speaker
And like he's estranged from his brother and his roommates trying to like plan a memorial for him.
00:30:26
Speaker
And then his brother, who's this like very opposite of him, like coked up restaurant owner shows up and just starts fucking shit up.
00:30:33
Speaker
And Adam Driver played the coked up restaurant owner.
00:30:36
Speaker
First of all, in person, he is massive.
00:30:40
Speaker
He is a humongous human being.
00:30:43
Speaker
And it was him and Kerry Russell in this play.
00:30:45
Speaker
Wow.
00:30:46
Speaker
Kerry Russell played the sister.
00:30:47
Speaker
It was it was a spectacular one of the best nights of my life.
00:30:49
Speaker
We won like me and my brother won like a ticket lottery.
00:30:52
Speaker
And so we're like on the floor like.
00:30:54
Speaker
Hell yeah.
00:30:55
Speaker
18th row.
00:30:56
Speaker
It was fucking incredible.
00:30:57
Speaker
But I that the middle sequence really reminded me of that.
00:31:01
Speaker
And I just wanted to brag that I saw Adam Driver in a play.
00:31:02
Speaker
Humble brag.
00:31:05
Speaker
Yeah, humble brag.
00:31:06
Speaker
Can we talk about the moment where he just is wearing athleisure?
00:31:10
Speaker
He's just wearing Viore.
00:31:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:13
Speaker
I mean, it's like, what the fuck?
00:31:15
Speaker
Like, I was like, did they just catch him on his off day?
00:31:18
Speaker
And they were like, I just hop in the scene because it's like it is in keeping with the rest of what he wears and that it's very monochromatic and dark.
00:31:24
Speaker
But like what?
00:31:26
Speaker
Speaking of that, Austin, like I wanted to understand to the extent this was truly just Francis doing Francis versus him employing people in the industry that have accomplished big things.
00:31:38
Speaker
And there's some people on this production that have done some big things.
00:31:43
Speaker
And one that perplexed me the most because one of the things I do not think worked well in this movie is the costuming.
00:31:49
Speaker
Dude, I thought the costuming was fucking perfect.
00:31:53
Speaker
But the person that costumed this movie costumed The Shining and Clockwork Orange.
00:31:59
Speaker
Yeah, dude.
00:32:00
Speaker
That makes sense.
00:32:01
Speaker
You can see it.
00:32:02
Speaker
All of Shia LaBeouf's costumes deserve an award.
00:32:05
Speaker
And his hair.
00:32:07
Speaker
His hair deserves a fucking Oscar in and of itself.
00:32:09
Speaker
Shia LaBeouf is a bad person.
00:32:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:12
Speaker
His performance in this movie is otherworldly.
00:32:14
Speaker
It's extraordinary.
00:32:15
Speaker
It's good.
00:32:15
Speaker
It's extraordinary.
00:32:16
Speaker
He's also good in almost everything he's in.
00:32:18
Speaker
He's a great actor, which sucks because he's an awful person.
00:32:22
Speaker
But I love him as an actor.
00:32:22
Speaker
Same with fucking Dustin Hoffman.
00:32:24
Speaker
Great actor.
00:32:24
Speaker
He's a bad person.
00:32:26
Speaker
and john voight john voight i think is really great in this movie when john voight fakes the stroke yeah and then he shoots him in the ass with two arrows with a little baby cupid bow and arrow it's so this movie is a testament this movie is a testament to doing something stupid and taking it completely seriously
00:32:48
Speaker
Nobody in this movie felt like they were in it for unsincere reasons, even though they were saying... Yeah, they wanted to work with Francis.
00:32:54
Speaker
Yeah, they were saying insane shit.
00:32:55
Speaker
Like, they wanted to be in the last movie Francis Ford Coppola makes before he dies, which is realistically probably what this is.
00:33:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:03
Speaker
Oh, 100%.
00:33:03
Speaker
I want to read... Go ahead, Joe.
00:33:04
Speaker
No, I was just kind of going to read it.
00:33:07
Speaker
I want to read a couple of letterboxes of this movie that I find funny.
00:33:10
Speaker
That shit sucked Mega Cockalice.
00:33:13
Speaker
Hell yeah.
00:33:14
Speaker
Pretty good.
00:33:14
Speaker
Which is very funny.
00:33:16
Speaker
The great Demi Adeja Wigbe said, Southland Tales coded, parentheses, neutral.
00:33:21
Speaker
A Wachowski movie for boomers, parentheses, neutral to positive.
00:33:26
Speaker
A man who did Destination and Imagination in middle school truly has the power to change the world.
00:33:32
Speaker
which I think is really funny.
00:33:35
Speaker
The 138 minute cinematic equivalent of someone showing you a YouTube video they promise is really good.
00:33:40
Speaker
Yeah, a lot of good ones.
00:33:45
Speaker
Here's a good one.
00:33:47
Speaker
This is a five star review by 24 frames of Nick.
00:33:51
Speaker
Beautiful.
00:33:52
Speaker
Title of the review, Y'all Are Wrong.
00:33:55
Speaker
You see, you gotta go into this movie the same way as Francis Ford Coppola was making it, blazed out of your fucking mind.
00:34:02
Speaker
You gotta meet him on the same plane, the same level of thinking, hitting the cart six times before entering the showing like I did.
00:34:12
Speaker
I could see it really clicking that way.
00:34:14
Speaker
You might be able to see The Matrix if you did that, honestly.
00:34:18
Speaker
It would start looking like code.
00:34:20
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:34:22
Speaker
That dialogue would hit the deepest quotes you've ever heard in your life.
00:34:26
Speaker
When he starts doing Hamlet, I would fucking burst into tears.
00:34:30
Speaker
I gotta go back to something particular in the movie, because there's one scene in the movie that's pretty long that I just did it...
00:34:37
Speaker
probably set up a lot of my sentiment for the rest of it.
00:34:40
Speaker
And I just, the fucking weird hanging wooden structure overlooking the model city just weirded me out.
00:34:49
Speaker
What the fuck was that?
00:34:53
Speaker
I was so entranced by it.
00:34:55
Speaker
Like I couldn't look away.
00:34:56
Speaker
I was too.
00:34:57
Speaker
That's the entire movie though.
00:34:59
Speaker
It's a train wreck.
00:35:00
Speaker
It really is.
00:35:00
Speaker
And you just can't stop watching it.
00:35:03
Speaker
It's I mean, it truly is the same thing I felt watching Southland Tales for the first time of just going, what the fuck is happening?
00:35:11
Speaker
I did not know you could make a movie like this.
00:35:13
Speaker
And by this, I mean bad.
00:35:16
Speaker
But also but also usually when I see a bad movie, I'm like, this sucks.
00:35:22
Speaker
I hate I don't like watching this.
00:35:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:24
Speaker
But watching this and watching Southland Tales, you're like, oh, oh, my God, maybe bad movies aren't bad.
00:35:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:32
Speaker
Which is like, it's like, you watch something like Gigli, which I watched earlier this year for the first time.
00:35:37
Speaker
And you're like, that is a movie with no voice, no ideas.
00:35:41
Speaker
It's just bad.
00:35:43
Speaker
And the performances are bad.
00:35:44
Speaker
And there's nothing interesting happening.
00:35:46
Speaker
Both this and Southland Tales, like...
00:35:50
Speaker
Shit happens.
00:35:51
Speaker
And so much.
00:35:52
Speaker
Interesting shit happens.
00:35:53
Speaker
Interesting shit.
00:35:54
Speaker
And like you said, you cannot predict what's going to happen one second to the next.
00:35:58
Speaker
And like, because no one could, because no one's attuned their minds to that.
00:36:03
Speaker
What's the line that Aubrey Plaza says when she's trying to get Adam Driver to have sex with her?
00:36:09
Speaker
She's like, you're so, you're like 100% anal.
00:36:11
Speaker
You're so anal.
00:36:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:16
Speaker
She said, she says good thing.
00:36:17
Speaker
I'm, I'm a hundred percent oral.
00:36:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:19
Speaker
You're a hundred percent.
00:36:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:22
Speaker
What the fuck?
00:36:23
Speaker
You know, it's a good thing.
00:36:25
Speaker
We, uh,
00:36:27
Speaker
I like maybe it's just because I'm a person a dickhead who listens to so much Bill Simmons.
00:36:31
Speaker
But sometimes I often think about directors in terms of ballplayers.
00:36:36
Speaker
Who are there are there are guys who finish their career in the same way that like Jordan did.
00:36:46
Speaker
Where it's like going out real sad.
00:36:49
Speaker
On the Wizards and then there are guys who.
00:36:53
Speaker
retire in a really, like, kind of blaze of glory in, like, an incredible way.
00:36:56
Speaker
Most guys end up just kind of falling apart.
00:36:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:00
Speaker
Like, Stanley Kubrick is Jim Brown.
00:37:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:04
Speaker
Like, all hitters.
00:37:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:08
Speaker
And then there are guys who, like, it's an interesting thing of looking at... We...
00:37:15
Speaker
The news is looking like Killers of the Flower Moon might be the final Scorsese film.
00:37:20
Speaker
Yeah, he said two things canceled.
00:37:22
Speaker
He has postponed or canceled two separate projects that we're both supposed to be filming this year.
00:37:29
Speaker
We just have to think about the fact that these are men who are in their...
00:37:32
Speaker
70s and 80s it's the same with Lynch it seems like Lynch's like last thing might be Twin Peaks The Return and it's like holy fucking shit which is great what a great way to end it man yeah it's incredible that Scorsese's last film might be Killers of the Flower Moon because I think it's like a
00:37:47
Speaker
top eight Scorsese movie ever.
00:37:50
Speaker
And it's a beautiful swan song movie.
00:37:52
Speaker
It's like it works as his last movie.
00:37:55
Speaker
It does.
00:37:57
Speaker
So it's really fascinating because then if we're going to think about what happens...
00:38:05
Speaker
If I could compare Francis Ford Coppola's, the ending of his career, to any ballplayer, I think, or really compare Megalopolis to any ballplayer, I think you have to think about the finale of Kobe's season, his final season.
00:38:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:19
Speaker
In the fact that the Lakers were bad.
00:38:21
Speaker
Yeah, terrible.
00:38:22
Speaker
They were not making the playoffs.
00:38:23
Speaker
And his final game, he had 60 points on 50 shots, if I'm remembering correctly.
00:38:30
Speaker
Yep, yep.
00:38:30
Speaker
I believe it was 50 shots.
00:38:32
Speaker
And that's what Megalopolis feels like to me.
00:38:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:35
Speaker
And that and I don't think it's you go 22 for 50.
00:38:40
Speaker
Like, you know, yeah, I don't put up all the times.
00:38:43
Speaker
I'll be honest.
00:38:44
Speaker
No, it doesn't.
00:38:44
Speaker
It doesn't.
00:38:45
Speaker
It's got like a, you know, 15 percent like behind the line.
00:38:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:49
Speaker
But when it doesn't hit, you're still like he's not he's not he's not take he's not doing layups.
00:38:55
Speaker
He's fucking tossing it from half court.
00:38:58
Speaker
Which is what Kobe did.
00:38:58
Speaker
Kobe was like, I'm going to shoot from everywhere and maybe I'll hit, maybe I won't.
00:39:02
Speaker
And like, that's a good comp, Brett.
00:39:04
Speaker
That's a very good comp.
00:39:05
Speaker
I totally agree with you.
00:39:06
Speaker
That's so interesting.
00:39:09
Speaker
And this is, for all intents and purposes and what we are all, we've already said, and Coppola has said, this is it.
00:39:16
Speaker
He has put down every bit of income he could muster up, everything from the winery, all of it, to create a project that for him... And Zach, you're right.
00:39:28
Speaker
I'm glad that you called me out because the more I've thought about it, the more we've talked about it on this podcast, and Joe, you and Austin talking about the context of this, is it's like... If I could hand this script to anybody and I could hand a shot list to anybody...
00:39:46
Speaker
And I could ask them to be like, you shoot it exactly as it's written.
00:39:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:51
Speaker
Anyone else would hedge their bets and curb whatever is going on.
00:39:55
Speaker
And even if they even if they like line by line followed exactly what was there is you still would walk out of the movie and it would feel so much different.
00:40:04
Speaker
Mm hmm.
00:40:05
Speaker
And I think it would feel tragically bad.
00:40:08
Speaker
Empty.
00:40:08
Speaker
It would feel empty.
00:40:10
Speaker
And this movie is full.
00:40:13
Speaker
It is full.
00:40:13
Speaker
This movie is overflowing.
00:40:18
Speaker
Despite being terrible, it's amazing.
00:40:22
Speaker
And despite being devoid of meaning, it's full of joy.
00:40:27
Speaker
I still have no idea.
00:40:29
Speaker
I was very moved by it.
00:40:30
Speaker
I have no idea what Dustin Hoffman's character did.
00:40:34
Speaker
He was like his fixer.
00:40:35
Speaker
Yeah, he's like the mayor's fixer.
00:40:37
Speaker
But he also has $100 million to give to her virginal promise.
00:40:44
Speaker
It's like, what's going on here?
00:40:45
Speaker
Also, what was that scene?
00:40:47
Speaker
They were donating to keep her a virgin?
00:40:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:50
Speaker
That's what they were doing.
00:40:51
Speaker
They were paying her to not fuck?
00:40:55
Speaker
Yeah, there's something about going... The city was in debt was the whole thing of the tension at the beginning scene.
00:41:03
Speaker
Yeah, I want a 4K steelbook of this, but I really want them to call it a 4K Megalon book.
00:41:08
Speaker
I want a Megalon book.
00:41:11
Speaker
I'll pay so much money for it.
00:41:13
Speaker
I want this on Criterion, and I want 1,000 hours of behind-the-scenes footage.
00:41:19
Speaker
I want commentary from Adam Driver.
00:41:23
Speaker
I want get John Voight in there.
00:41:25
Speaker
Yeah, everybody get the booth.
00:41:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:30
Speaker
No, no, no, no, no.
00:41:31
Speaker
I want to hear what Jon Voight thinks about the Clodio storyline.
00:41:35
Speaker
No, I'm not even kidding.
00:41:37
Speaker
I need to hear what Jon Voight thinks about this movie.
00:41:40
Speaker
Yeah, I really want to know.
00:41:43
Speaker
I'm fascinated.
00:41:44
Speaker
Yeah, I want six different essays by critics from six different backgrounds all talking about it.
00:41:51
Speaker
I want, like, Richard Brody, but I also want, like, some 22-year-old critic who writes for fucking Gawker.
00:41:57
Speaker
Like, I want everybody to know.
00:41:59
Speaker
to talk about this movie.
00:42:00
Speaker
And I just want to hear about it.
00:42:02
Speaker
I think my favorite review that is the most level-headed is by Bill Debris.
00:42:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:10
Speaker
Just like calling out all the problems with it, but ending it just saying like, I enjoyed every second.
00:42:16
Speaker
That's the thing about this movie is you can't deny that you were entertained.
00:42:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:24
Speaker
Boys, I need you to lean in for a moment.
00:42:27
Speaker
Because there's something we haven't talked about, and that is that Natalie Emanuel is a beautiful, perfect movie.
00:42:34
Speaker
She's so gorgeous.
00:42:37
Speaker
Yeah, that's it.
00:42:38
Speaker
I love her.
00:42:38
Speaker
I don't know if she's good in this movie at all, but she's very beautiful.
00:42:41
Speaker
Her entire performance is ADR'd.
00:42:44
Speaker
Every line she says, it's so weird.
00:42:48
Speaker
Yeah, Esposito's very ADR'd.
00:42:51
Speaker
It's very weird.
00:42:52
Speaker
Confounding.
00:42:53
Speaker
The important thing is that she was there.
00:42:56
Speaker
Her presence is felt.
00:42:58
Speaker
And I think she I think she accomplishes exactly what the movie wants, which is like she is a radiant orb of inspiration for a man.
00:43:06
Speaker
Like it's like that's all it wants from her.
00:43:08
Speaker
Exactly what it needs to be.
00:43:10
Speaker
I locked in so hard when our introduction to her was also soundtracked by a Fred again song.
00:43:16
Speaker
Yeah, sure.
00:43:17
Speaker
I was like, oh, I'm gonna like this movie.
00:43:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:20
Speaker
And like she's she's kind of in us in a sex ring with Clodio and his siblings.
00:43:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:27
Speaker
And he's in love with her.
00:43:28
Speaker
But then that just kind of gets dropped, which which then does not become her cousins through marriage.
00:43:34
Speaker
Yes.
00:43:36
Speaker
Technically, they are her cousins.
00:43:39
Speaker
Caesar's.
00:43:40
Speaker
But again, is is is sorry, is Crassus is he's Caesar and Claudio's grandfather, not uncle.
00:43:49
Speaker
He's well, he's he's Caesar's uncle, but they say he's Claudio's grandfather at one point and they say he's his father at one point.
00:43:59
Speaker
Coppola was blazing up every fucking day.
00:44:01
Speaker
He was like, he knew.
00:44:02
Speaker
He's got like an Immortan Joe thing going on.
00:44:04
Speaker
Yeah, he does.
00:44:05
Speaker
That's true.
00:44:06
Speaker
But it's like a... But it's the thing of like... Coppola is making this epic scale and calling it New Rome.
00:44:15
Speaker
Of course, everything is so like...
00:44:19
Speaker
He's just like, ah, it's all fucked up.
00:44:20
Speaker
It's all ancient Rome anyways, dude.
00:44:21
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever the fuck.
00:44:22
Speaker
We'll figure it out as it goes.
00:44:23
Speaker
And then at the end when they're on the train, Cicero says, let me hold him.
00:44:29
Speaker
And it's inexplicably a girl.
00:44:31
Speaker
Yeah, dude.
00:44:33
Speaker
I had the exact moment where I was like, what the fuck?
00:44:36
Speaker
He said him.
00:44:37
Speaker
What the fuck?
00:44:38
Speaker
I'm glad I'm not the only one.
00:44:40
Speaker
No, I clocked that.
00:44:41
Speaker
I was like, oh, okay, they had Frank Jr. And it's like, oh, no, it's a girl.
00:44:45
Speaker
It's a girl.
00:44:47
Speaker
What did they name her?
00:44:49
Speaker
Sunny?
00:44:50
Speaker
Sunny Hope.
00:44:52
Speaker
Sunny Hope.
00:44:53
Speaker
Great name.
00:44:54
Speaker
Incredible.
00:44:55
Speaker
Speaking of great names and beautiful women, Aubrey Plaza seems like she was having the time of her fucking girl.
00:45:00
Speaker
Oh, she had so much fun making this movie.
00:45:03
Speaker
Best supporting actress, Tom.
00:45:04
Speaker
She's the best.
00:45:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:06
Speaker
You might, when we do our Oscars, when we do the Paddington gone wildies, I, this movie might be showing up a lot.
00:45:13
Speaker
That's all I'm going to say.
00:45:15
Speaker
I'm saying Adam Driver is getting Best Actor without a doubt.
00:45:19
Speaker
He is on my list for Best Actor 100%.
00:45:20
Speaker
He's probably not going to win for me, but he's going to be on my list.
00:45:23
Speaker
100%.
00:45:23
Speaker
I guarantee it.
00:45:24
Speaker
He's just so fascinating.
00:45:26
Speaker
And we've all said it, genuinely giving a great performance.
00:45:29
Speaker
He's great.
00:45:30
Speaker
He's so good.
00:45:31
Speaker
In an insane bad slash good movie.
00:45:35
Speaker
Dude, he sold the hell out of looking through tinted little papers for no reason at all.
00:45:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:41
Speaker
He's flipping through.
00:45:41
Speaker
He's just like, eh.
00:45:43
Speaker
It was like a national treasure when they have the different colors on the glasses and you see different things on the back of the Declaration of Independence.
00:45:52
Speaker
I was going to say it's like a viewfinder where he's just flipping through.
00:45:54
Speaker
He's like, oh, this one's got a cat on it.
00:45:58
Speaker
If we had just cut to him looking through a kaleidoscope at one point, I would have been like, yep.
00:46:02
Speaker
Sure.
00:46:02
Speaker
He's a living testament to what you can accomplish when your second assistant director goes, hey, I don't think this makes sense.
00:46:10
Speaker
And you go, I don't care.
00:46:12
Speaker
Yeah, and your first AD is your nephew, so he's not going to tell you shit.
00:46:15
Speaker
Also, to speak of nephews, Jason Schwartzman also having a ton of fun in this movie.
00:46:19
Speaker
He was having so much fun.
00:46:20
Speaker
You know what, Jason Schwartzman is just being in this?
00:46:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:23
Speaker
Schwartzman is just having fun right now.
00:46:25
Speaker
He was having fun in Hunger Games.
00:46:27
Speaker
He did that tiny indie movie about being like a... I'm excited to see that, the Nate Silver movie.
00:46:33
Speaker
Yeah, what's it called?
00:46:33
Speaker
Between the Temples or something?
00:46:35
Speaker
Yeah, Between the Temples.
00:46:36
Speaker
Yeah, that looks really good.
00:46:37
Speaker
Yeah, where was Cage?
00:46:43
Speaker
don't he and francis not super get along they i thought they had figured that out i think they figured it out after the movie oh i think they figured it out while the movie was in editing maybe after eleanor died they figured i also think like frankly there's a lot of that extended coppola family that he doesn't fuck with but it's like yeah romey's romey's in it so his granddaughter talia's in it yeah it's in it where's sophia
00:47:09
Speaker
She was like, hey, here's my kid.
00:47:10
Speaker
Just playing her character from Godfather 3.
00:47:15
Speaker
Speaking of Coppola regulars that are Trump supporters, where the fuck was Vincent Gallo?
00:47:20
Speaker
Wow, great question.
00:47:22
Speaker
The only bad performance in the movie to me is Talia Shire.
00:47:25
Speaker
What is she doing?
00:47:26
Speaker
I don't understand.
00:47:26
Speaker
inconsequential though it really is i mean it's like he's a random like when she yeah but then she shows up at the end and it's supposed to be meaningful and i was like guys you're not you're not selling this but i understand it's a sister so i'm like ending shot hits of the baby and the city behind him and she's like it's just time square he's like stop time and she's like time stop and then it stops right from with the fucking baby i was like what fucking metaphor are you doing what does this mean
00:47:52
Speaker
I don't understand it.
00:47:53
Speaker
I'm crying.
00:47:54
Speaker
Joe, it means that we're... Yeah, I was shooting underneath.
00:47:57
Speaker
Joe, it means that we're building the world to hand to our descendants and we won't be there for it.
00:48:01
Speaker
And they're going to keep moving.
00:48:02
Speaker
So we need to take care of it for the sake of ours.
00:48:05
Speaker
You're so damn right.
00:48:06
Speaker
Which is a beautiful sentiment.
00:48:08
Speaker
It is a beautiful sentiment.
00:48:10
Speaker
It's sort of like it's the same sentiment as fucking The Boy and the Heron, but It's true.
00:48:18
Speaker
It's true.
00:48:18
Speaker
Double feature.
00:48:19
Speaker
Honestly, it's a great double feature.
00:48:21
Speaker
I'd be fascinated to watch it.
00:48:27
Speaker
Here's how you do it.
00:48:28
Speaker
You start Boy in the Heron.
00:48:29
Speaker
About 30 minutes in, you take a very strong edible.
00:48:34
Speaker
The edible kicks in as Boy in the Heron is third acting.
00:48:39
Speaker
And then you're peeking as Megalopolis starts and you ride the come down through Megalopolis.
00:48:46
Speaker
Yeah, and you get to the end and you feel like absolute dog ass, but also amazing.
00:48:49
Speaker
And then you either call every person in your life and you tell them you love them and that you want to build for the future or you die.
00:48:56
Speaker
Yeah, or no one hears from you for six days.
00:48:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:01
Speaker
Well, speaking of films that don't have beautiful sentiments, speaking of films that are mean and nasty and cruel and brutal, Zach saw a little flick recently that I raved about on last week's pod.
Unique Elements in The Substance and Mixed Reactions
00:49:14
Speaker
that Austin has seen since then.
00:49:15
Speaker
I also saw it.
00:49:16
Speaker
I am the only one that hasn't seen it.
00:49:18
Speaker
I haven't had time.
00:49:19
Speaker
I feel like a fucking bitch.
00:49:20
Speaker
We'll probably chop it up for a few minutes.
00:49:23
Speaker
But Corley Farjats' film The Substance, starring Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley.
00:49:31
Speaker
Zach, you were the most recent person to see it.
00:49:32
Speaker
What did you think?
00:49:34
Speaker
So I turned on the Baylor game yesterday morning, 11 a.m.
00:49:37
Speaker
Central Time.
00:49:38
Speaker
And after a couple drives, decided I am not watching this and quickly found myself a seat at Alamo Draft House to see the substance at lunchtime.
00:49:48
Speaker
Beautiful.
00:49:50
Speaker
And proceeded to enjoy.
00:49:51
Speaker
Yeah, did you eat anything?
00:49:53
Speaker
What?
00:49:53
Speaker
Did you eat anything?
00:49:54
Speaker
No, dude.
00:49:55
Speaker
Okay.
00:49:56
Speaker
Probably for the best.
00:49:57
Speaker
I almost ordered something, but I was so fucking locked into this movie.
00:50:01
Speaker
I could not.
00:50:02
Speaker
Also, I got very nauseous several times watching this movie.
00:50:05
Speaker
Yeah, it wouldn't have been good to have food.
00:50:07
Speaker
I don't think I would have wanted food.
00:50:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:09
Speaker
But that's one of the most fun movies I've seen in a long time.
00:50:13
Speaker
Not even just fun horror movies, just fun movies.
00:50:17
Speaker
And maybe I think this is a top 10 horror movie for me all time.
00:50:23
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:50:24
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:50:25
Speaker
Love that.
00:50:26
Speaker
It's everything you want to see the evolution from Cronenberg's The Fly turn into in 2024.
00:50:35
Speaker
And then adding like the social context of the male gaze.
00:50:40
Speaker
And I said this in the group chat yesterday, but what Farjad, is that how you say your name?
00:50:46
Speaker
I think it's Farja.
00:50:47
Speaker
I think the T is silent.
00:50:48
Speaker
So what she does in this movie by filming some of the sexiest stuff you have ever seen is saying like, I dare you to become horny.
00:50:58
Speaker
I dare you to have a good sexy time right now.
00:51:01
Speaker
And then just fully pulls the rug out and says, psych, this shit's gross.
00:51:07
Speaker
Did you have, was there a crowd?
00:51:09
Speaker
Did you have like people there?
00:51:10
Speaker
Packed house.
00:51:11
Speaker
Oh, nice.
00:51:12
Speaker
That's great.
00:51:12
Speaker
Which was such a good thing for that movie.
00:51:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:15
Speaker
Hell yeah.
00:51:16
Speaker
But yeah, really love the substance.
00:51:18
Speaker
I, yeah, I don't want to spoil too much because I think Joe's going to fuck with this movie heavily.
00:51:25
Speaker
I will.
00:51:25
Speaker
I already know I will.
00:51:26
Speaker
Don't spoil it.
00:51:27
Speaker
Yeah, I don't want to spoil it.
00:51:29
Speaker
We can talk more about it in depth later.
00:51:30
Speaker
I keep thinking of when you guys talk about the substance, my brain auto fills it to the stuff, which is like a Roger Corman movie from like the 60s or the 70s.
00:51:40
Speaker
That's terrible, but also amazing.
00:51:42
Speaker
Both horror movies, but they are not.
00:51:45
Speaker
It is not in the same level.
00:51:46
Speaker
The social commentary in this is, hey, capitalism's not great, is it?
00:51:52
Speaker
Have any of y'all seen Revenge?
00:51:54
Speaker
Her first one?
00:51:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:55
Speaker
I watched it a couple weeks ago.
00:51:56
Speaker
I watched it the same night.
00:51:59
Speaker
You should check it out.
00:52:00
Speaker
I watched it with my friend, and we thought it was going to be a fun horror movie, and we turned it off because we were not in the mood to watch the movie that it ended up being.
00:52:08
Speaker
It's gnarly.
00:52:09
Speaker
It's pretty nasty.
00:52:10
Speaker
I will also go ahead and say, not that I think we have to give content warnings for everything, but I think specifically for Revenge,
00:52:17
Speaker
If you don't like rape revenge stories, I would kind of avoid it.
00:52:20
Speaker
Yeah, good call.
00:52:22
Speaker
Yeah, it's a little triggering for sure.
00:52:24
Speaker
Yeah, I think there's tons of shit that it's like fucking get over it.
00:52:26
Speaker
I think specifically with sexual assault stuff, it's...
00:52:30
Speaker
better to it's one of those things that if you're not going to do if you're not going to put a warning on you got to do it amazing that you have to do it perfect and yeah I think you should put a warning on it regardless because it's it's just one of those things it's always it's always going to give someone PTSD it's one of the few things that I think that in suicide are the two things that like yeah it's two of the things that Gaspar Noe has famously gotten very wrong yeah yeah I I like I like revenge I I
00:52:59
Speaker
I thought it was pretty good.
00:53:01
Speaker
There's one, this cave sequence in Revenge, which you'll all know what I'm talking about when you watch it through, has really stuck with me.
00:53:09
Speaker
And I really love that sequence a lot.
00:53:11
Speaker
Pretty interesting.
00:53:12
Speaker
Zach, I will say that one thing about Revenge that you will, our friend Justin loves to point this out when he sees movies, is there's some firearm stuff that you're going to go, what the fuck?
00:53:24
Speaker
That's not how guns work.
00:53:26
Speaker
Shout out to Downey.
00:53:27
Speaker
I love one of my... A good friend of... I don't know if Red or Zach know her, but Austin and I had a friend, Kat, her name's Stevens now.
00:53:39
Speaker
Her husband was in the military and whenever I talked to him about action movies, his review for the movies almost solely rests on if the action star can properly use a firearm.
00:53:52
Speaker
He loves John Wick.
00:53:54
Speaker
Yeah, so Heat's his favorite movie.
00:53:55
Speaker
He loves Heat.
00:53:56
Speaker
Because of Val Kilmer.
00:53:57
Speaker
That stuff did start to matter to me more recently.
00:54:00
Speaker
Before, I used to just write it off as like... Guy Ritchie's The Covenant I thought was a pretty good movie.
00:54:06
Speaker
I had a good time with it.
00:54:07
Speaker
It's like a good three out of five.
00:54:08
Speaker
It's a perfect dad movie.
00:54:10
Speaker
Jay...
00:54:12
Speaker
watched it and went that's not how the military works they don't know the tactics they don't know the hand signals they don't know how to fucking communicate they're not using the guns right they don't know how to throw grenades and i'm like that's important commentary because guy richie's a dumbass in the best way possible yeah he's also british making a movie with the american military he's like i don't know have a guy he just put the magazine in his car
00:54:35
Speaker
Austin, we haven't heard from you.
00:54:37
Speaker
I rather I heard you make reference to the subject.
00:54:39
Speaker
Yeah, I didn't even mean to have you hear it.
00:54:44
Speaker
Now I'm kind of I don't really want to talk about my feelings about it because it's going to kind of contradict a lot of what I said about Megalopolis.
00:54:53
Speaker
I admired this movie.
00:54:55
Speaker
I admired the substance.
00:54:56
Speaker
I was like, I thought it was very admirably gross.
00:55:00
Speaker
I loved a lot of the imagery.
00:55:03
Speaker
Again, it is a movie that will stick with me.
00:55:07
Speaker
It's the only time in my adult life that I have actively turned away from a screen because I was so grossed out.
00:55:17
Speaker
I was like, like, and it, it was at a point that I don't even like, it wasn't the grossest thing that happened in the movie.
00:55:23
Speaker
It was just a very long sustained sequence of grossness.
00:55:28
Speaker
And I was like, I just, I'm just not, I also just had a weird viewing experience where I saw it was me and one other dude in a theater.
00:55:35
Speaker
Not great.
00:55:38
Speaker
So take that with a grain of salt.
00:55:42
Speaker
Because I wish, I would love, I would see this movie again.
00:55:45
Speaker
I don't really have a desire to see it again anytime soon.
00:55:47
Speaker
But I would see it again if I was promised a packed house.
00:55:50
Speaker
It made a big difference.
00:55:51
Speaker
I'm sure.
00:55:52
Speaker
And I think that would be really fun.
00:55:55
Speaker
You have a few scattered people audibly gagging and other scattered people howling with laughter.
00:56:01
Speaker
Other people just groaning like, ugh.
00:56:05
Speaker
It's such a reaction movie.
00:56:08
Speaker
I want to see a revival screening in five years when it's become a sort of classic of the genre.
00:56:15
Speaker
I think it instantly has put itself in a...
00:56:18
Speaker
I think so.
00:56:18
Speaker
You can tell a movie has entered the zeitgeist when people are making memes of it.
00:56:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:56:23
Speaker
There's a lot of good substance memes.
00:56:25
Speaker
There is.
00:56:26
Speaker
Well, it's not nothing that it won the hand screenwriting award.
00:56:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:56:32
Speaker
All that to say I didn't really like it.
00:56:38
Speaker
Again, what I'm about to say is going to contradict basically everything I talked about liking in Megalopolis, but I am what I am.
00:56:44
Speaker
This is a platform of subjectivity.
00:56:47
Speaker
Yeah, I just found it very overwrought and not in the visuals because I like how extreme the visuals are.
00:56:58
Speaker
I thought the messaging was...
00:57:02
Speaker
really one note and overwritten.
00:57:04
Speaker
It felt very French in that way to me.
00:57:08
Speaker
Like it felt very much like, you know, here's my issue and I'm going to beat it into the ground.
00:57:12
Speaker
Honestly, just added a huge, bold, triple spaced con to my pros and cons list for this movie.
00:57:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:20
Speaker
It feels French.
00:57:22
Speaker
It's extremely French.
00:57:23
Speaker
It's very French.
00:57:24
Speaker
And like, I, I don't know.
00:57:27
Speaker
It's one of those things where also like,
00:57:31
Speaker
this movie is for everyone.
00:57:32
Speaker
I do think people should see it, but like,
00:57:37
Speaker
I'm always when it's a movie made by a woman that's about women in such a distinct, drastic way.
00:57:43
Speaker
Like I told Clarissa when I got home, I was like, this may be one of the only movies I've ever seen that literally could not be made by a man.
00:57:50
Speaker
Like literally, literally could not, which is admirable to me.
00:57:54
Speaker
But I, I don't know.
00:57:56
Speaker
I left it and I was like, I just, it felt kind of empty to me outside of the visual.
00:58:02
Speaker
Yeah, women are hard to empathize with, right?
00:58:05
Speaker
Oh, God.
00:58:06
Speaker
Women are from your mouth to God's ears.
00:58:10
Speaker
But I don't know.
00:58:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:13
Speaker
Again, it's sticking with me.
00:58:14
Speaker
I like it more now than I liked it the day I saw it.
00:58:19
Speaker
It really is kind of poking at me in a way.
00:58:21
Speaker
And again, it's sticking with me.
00:58:24
Speaker
We can talk more about it in depth later.
00:58:26
Speaker
The writing was my biggest problem with it.
00:58:30
Speaker
I didn't like the writing very much.
00:58:31
Speaker
But that's not what I go to a movie like that for in the first place.
00:58:34
Speaker
But I think the movie thinks it's saying a lot.
00:58:37
Speaker
And to me, it just didn't have much to say.
00:58:40
Speaker
I disagree.
00:58:41
Speaker
I mean, I declared it on this podcast and I
00:58:48
Speaker
I still love it.
00:58:49
Speaker
I have found myself wondering if I do think it's better than Challengers because I said it was my favorite film of the year.
00:58:56
Speaker
Right now, Challengers is sitting at my number one.
00:58:57
Speaker
I haven't ranked this movie yet on my letterboxd list.
00:59:00
Speaker
Not that the list fucking matter.
00:59:01
Speaker
We move them around all the time.
00:59:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:04
Speaker
This movie will go up and down in my list.
00:59:08
Speaker
Throughout the rest of the year, I'll go back.
00:59:10
Speaker
I always am reorganizing and changing and this movie will change spots.
00:59:14
Speaker
I have it right behind Challengers in mind at the moment.
00:59:18
Speaker
And it, as somebody who loved it, I also, I think I fully agree.
00:59:22
Speaker
And that it is like, in terms of the actual,
00:59:28
Speaker
And it feels very odd to me because I think that all of the dialogue that's happening is I'm like, this feels pretty one note.
00:59:35
Speaker
This feels everything that's on the surface.
00:59:36
Speaker
Whereas like all of the visuals is where all of the depths is.
00:59:39
Speaker
I mean, like the visuals is really what feels like it contains volumes.
00:59:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:47
Speaker
And what to me felt so striking.
00:59:49
Speaker
I said this to Austin.
00:59:50
Speaker
I think I might have said this on the podcast.
00:59:53
Speaker
But I said it to my dear friend Julia Who does not love extremity in films She's got good taste But there's some stuff where she's Watched Kinds of Kindness and was like yeah fuck that movie Because there's some extremity in it But I told Julia I was like Because I went and saw it with her husband Our dear friend Hayden and Spencer And I said this is a movie Directed by a woman Starring women
01:00:22
Speaker
made about women made for women and there are a lot of women I don't know if I could recommend this movie to yeah and I want them to see it because I think like it's cool that this movie like being a movie release and getting to like make some money
01:00:39
Speaker
At least it seems like.
01:00:40
Speaker
It's like on 2,500 screens.
01:00:42
Speaker
It's amazing that it's getting an actual semi-wide release.
01:00:46
Speaker
We saw it in Waco.
01:00:48
Speaker
That's crazy.
01:00:49
Speaker
It's funny you say that, Red, because there were moments in the movie and like...
01:00:54
Speaker
I was sitting next to another solo male moviegoer.
01:00:58
Speaker
And there were moments in the movie where it was like, I had it tattooed on my forehead.
01:01:03
Speaker
Like this movie is about you.
01:01:06
Speaker
I was like, but it's like, it was successful and good in the sense of like, it did that.
01:01:14
Speaker
The thing about movies like that is it's as for straight white guys, cisgender, um,
01:01:20
Speaker
We have been... Movies have been made about us since the dawn of movies.
01:01:25
Speaker
And so even the experimental shit that's about being a white guy or whatever is...
01:01:32
Speaker
is like more palatable to us because we've seen all the movies that are about us that are super normal.
01:01:38
Speaker
And so being a woman or being a person of color or being like on the gender spectrum somewhere that's not cisgender, there is so much room for expressionistic, artistic, you know, like filmmaking or music making, songwriting, whatever.
01:01:59
Speaker
that it's hard for the general public to sit through something that's actually about being a woman.
01:02:07
Speaker
It's easy for the general public to sit through Barbie, which is a pretty, if you care about women, like if you're not a piece of shit, you already know the message of Barbie.
01:02:19
Speaker
That's just, and I'm sure there are a ton of pieces of shit out there that needed to see that.
01:02:24
Speaker
Sure.
01:02:24
Speaker
But they weren't going anyway.
01:02:26
Speaker
Yeah.
01:02:27
Speaker
I mean, another.
01:02:28
Speaker
I haven't seen the substance, but something like the substance that's so obviously very acutely about something very specific about being a woman, about how being a woman kind of inherently is living in a body horror situation because you're not in control of your own body in a lot of places.
01:02:44
Speaker
That's hard for normal guys that don't care to stomach.
01:02:50
Speaker
Yeah, I did think more is so fucking good at selling it to.
01:02:54
Speaker
I agree.
01:02:54
Speaker
My favorite combination.
01:02:55
Speaker
Yeah.
01:02:56
Speaker
My favorite scene in the movie is when she's in she's trying to get ready for a date.
01:02:59
Speaker
Yeah, I was about to say that like that.
01:03:02
Speaker
Whoa, it's unbelievable.
01:03:03
Speaker
And I think it's helped for me that there's it's it's a dialogue free scene.
01:03:07
Speaker
It's just her performing and you see it all written all over.
01:03:11
Speaker
I think all the performances in this movie, even Dennis Quaid going absolutely apeshit.
01:03:15
Speaker
Dude, him eating the shrimp is so fucking good.
01:03:17
Speaker
It's the grossest fucking thing in the entire world.
01:03:20
Speaker
And I learned that Ray Liotta was supposed to play that part, was cast, and then he died.
01:03:25
Speaker
And so he couldn't do it, which I think also would have been great.
01:03:28
Speaker
But Quaid brings something.
01:03:30
Speaker
So the way he walks is so gross.
01:03:33
Speaker
You're just like, fuck you, dude.
01:03:36
Speaker
And it's like...
01:03:37
Speaker
in in a way like that first scene where she the way she learns that not there's not a spoiler it's very early the way that she learns but she's in the bathroom and he comes in on a phone call talking about how she's gonna get fired and that's how she learns that she's not uh gonna have her show anymore and like i was like in that moment i was like oh maybe this movie's gonna be more conventional than i was said to believe
01:04:00
Speaker
And it's like, no, it's not at all.
01:04:03
Speaker
I do think all the performances are spectacular, like I said.
01:04:05
Speaker
It's like, I... And all credit to those actors for being game to do all that stuff.
01:04:11
Speaker
Like, it's real special in that regard.
01:04:14
Speaker
And I...
01:04:16
Speaker
After I left, I told Clarissa, I was like, I never want to watch that again.
01:04:20
Speaker
Now I really do.
01:04:22
Speaker
It's poking back in for me, and I do think it's a movie that's going to grow for me over time.
01:04:26
Speaker
So I'll just end it there.
01:04:28
Speaker
Shout out to Mega Alyssa Sue.
01:04:29
Speaker
I have one last question.
01:04:32
Speaker
I'm sorry?
01:04:33
Speaker
I have one final question about the substance, for myself at least.
01:04:38
Speaker
Did y'all think it was cool or cringy that they did the Shining Carpet?
01:04:44
Speaker
I was okay with it.
01:04:45
Speaker
It seemed like a good nod to me.
01:04:47
Speaker
It did look good.
01:04:48
Speaker
Because it's a nod because it's not the same.
01:04:49
Speaker
It's not the exact same.
01:04:50
Speaker
It is interesting to me because this movie is like Cronenberg and Zaloski.
01:04:56
Speaker
This movie is like Cronenberg and Possession to me.
01:04:59
Speaker
That's what this movie feels like.
01:05:01
Speaker
It does not feel like Kubrick at all.
01:05:03
Speaker
It's just so much more extreme and less...
01:05:07
Speaker
grounded than he ever got.
01:05:08
Speaker
So I kind of liked that.
01:05:09
Speaker
Then it was like, well, I'm going to try to evoke something else that's clearly not where this movie comes from.
01:05:14
Speaker
Well, Kubrick almost doesn't work with extremity.
01:05:16
Speaker
Like I think that's one of the things that makes Kubrick so like the way that he is is his restraints.
01:05:22
Speaker
It's just constructed.
01:05:23
Speaker
Yeah, but it's just like a, it's a fun little touch.
01:05:26
Speaker
I will say, and this is just directly cribbing something from the big picture, but I, the reason I really, really, really am hoping for something to celebrate Demi Moore and her performances is that like,
01:05:38
Speaker
Amanda Dobbins in the big picture talks so much about how her power as a movie star in the 90s was using her body.
01:05:46
Speaker
And so to add us at 61 to be fully nude for large swaths of this film.
01:05:53
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:54
Speaker
And she looks phenomenal.
01:05:56
Speaker
She looks phenomenal.
01:05:56
Speaker
Fucking smoke show.
01:05:57
Speaker
Good Lord.
01:05:59
Speaker
To use her body in that way, I think it's a genuine stroke of genius as a film.
01:06:05
Speaker
Yeah.
01:06:06
Speaker
I think it's so brave.
01:06:08
Speaker
I just am like, I'm baffled by how good this performance was.
01:06:11
Speaker
We also haven't said the name Margaret Qualley yet.
01:06:14
Speaker
Margaret Qualley is also excellent in the film.
01:06:15
Speaker
Incredible.
01:06:17
Speaker
excellent in most things she is in yeah she's she's one of the greats working this is the best thing i've seen her in to zach's point about like you know uh daring you to be horny at this movie it's like it was like coralie farger was like i know you've had a crush on her since the leftovers you little freak like i dare you she's in spandex we all saw once upon a time in hollywood yeah yeah yeah best foot shot in the history of cinema
01:06:43
Speaker
On the dashboard in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
01:06:46
Speaker
Yeah.
01:06:47
Speaker
Come on.
01:06:48
Speaker
Come on, baby.
01:06:49
Speaker
Speaking of quality, it is funny that apparently a quality childhood babysitter saw this movie.
01:06:55
Speaker
Oh, that's funny.
01:06:56
Speaker
Wild shit.
01:06:57
Speaker
Yeah.
01:06:58
Speaker
We have to say, as we always do, Nepo Baby.
01:07:02
Speaker
If you're a Nepo Baby and you're talented, I do not give a shit.
01:07:04
Speaker
I don't give a shit.
01:07:05
Speaker
I don't give a shit.
01:07:06
Speaker
It's the untalented Nepo babies that make me angry.
01:07:08
Speaker
Yeah.
01:07:09
Speaker
Margaret Qualley is incredibly talented.
01:07:10
Speaker
And again, very brave performance in this movie.
01:07:13
Speaker
Yeah.
01:07:13
Speaker
Like, you know, performances are all very brave.
01:07:16
Speaker
Yeah.
01:07:16
Speaker
Which is hard, which feels like a silly thing to say, but I really do believe it.
01:07:21
Speaker
Yeah.
01:07:21
Speaker
You know, we've been talking about body horror.
01:07:24
Speaker
We are coming up to October, and October we will not be talking about much body horror, but we're going to quickly just line out what our October looks like.
01:07:33
Speaker
We're not going to talk a ton in depth because that's what the episodes are fucking for.
01:07:37
Speaker
That's why you listen to them, you fucking freaks.
01:07:41
Speaker
And then we'll do some high and lows or any other bullshit we want to talk about.
01:07:46
Speaker
But so...
01:07:49
Speaker
This episode is coming out Monday, September 30th.
01:07:53
Speaker
The first episode that we are dropping for the month of October is coming out on the 7th.
01:07:59
Speaker
And that is going to be our beloved Austin John Ingalls is going to be bringing us Toby Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the original.
01:08:08
Speaker
And then there will be a larger discussion on slasher films.
01:08:12
Speaker
which will be really, really fucking fun.
01:08:14
Speaker
Excited.
01:08:14
Speaker
Very excited.
01:08:15
Speaker
Yeah.
01:08:16
Speaker
We also, it's really fun for us because I think especially for being a genre that's really for the sickos, but also like people have really specific things that they're into in the genre is we're bringing on two great returning guests.
01:08:30
Speaker
Actually, we'll be bringing on my friend Kat.
01:08:32
Speaker
She very kindly put together a list of some essential folk horror stuff for us, as well as a specific list.
01:08:41
Speaker
I think I might,
01:08:42
Speaker
put together on my letterbox a list of here's everything that we will be talking about in specifics and then anything else that maybe we'll split it up into essentials versus non-essentials for what we'll watch in the month of October.
01:08:56
Speaker
But Kat's going to come on and we're going to talk about, we're going to talk about folk horror and then she'll say goodbye.
01:09:01
Speaker
And Joe is bringing us the Exorcist 3, William Peter Blatty's Exorcist 3.
01:09:07
Speaker
Yeah, baby.
01:09:07
Speaker
Yeah.
01:09:08
Speaker
which I'm very much looking forward to.
01:09:10
Speaker
So excited to re-watch that and talk about it.
01:09:11
Speaker
Me too.
01:09:12
Speaker
I'm excited to watch it.
01:09:12
Speaker
I've heard so much about a fucking Patrick Ewing cameo, which I'm very excited about.
01:09:17
Speaker
Yeah, dude, it's fucking awesome.
01:09:20
Speaker
It's so good.
01:09:21
Speaker
It's one of the coolest movies I've ever watched in my entire life.
01:09:23
Speaker
Yeah, it's an incredibly cool movie.
01:09:24
Speaker
I'm excited to talk about it.
01:09:25
Speaker
I'm going to talk about the Ewing theory the entire time.
01:09:28
Speaker
The envelope?
01:09:31
Speaker
The envelope of the draft?
01:09:34
Speaker
No, I'm going to talk about the Ewing theory, which is a Bill Simmons thing.
01:09:37
Speaker
Oh, okay.
01:09:37
Speaker
Because I've ever read the book of basketball.
01:09:39
Speaker
It's when a team loses a player and then does good.
01:09:44
Speaker
Oh, okay.
01:09:44
Speaker
When you lose like your superstar that everyone's like, yeah, and then you get better.
01:09:47
Speaker
Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.
01:09:48
Speaker
Like the thunder.
01:09:49
Speaker
Yeah.
01:09:51
Speaker
Yep.
01:09:52
Speaker
And then we are welcoming back.
01:09:55
Speaker
It's been a while since we've heard from him.
01:09:56
Speaker
The man with the silky voice.
01:09:58
Speaker
Last heard during Dude's Rock Month.
01:10:00
Speaker
We are bringing back Andy Ingalls.
01:10:03
Speaker
And Andy is going to come talk about... Get ready.
01:10:05
Speaker
Yeah, get ready, fuckers.
01:10:06
Speaker
We're going to talk about the films of John Carpenter because Zach has brought us The Fog.
01:10:11
Speaker
It's kind of 1980.
01:10:12
Speaker
So cool.
01:10:13
Speaker
Kind of undersea masterpiece, in my opinion.
01:10:16
Speaker
I agree.
01:10:17
Speaker
Yeah.
01:10:18
Speaker
It's not his debut, right?
01:10:19
Speaker
No, it was after Halloween.
01:10:21
Speaker
It was after Halloween.
01:10:22
Speaker
After Halloween, interesting.
01:10:23
Speaker
Yeah.
01:10:23
Speaker
Assault on Precinct 13, Halloween, and then The Fog.
01:10:26
Speaker
Holy shit.
01:10:27
Speaker
Assault on Cleasing 13 was his debut.
01:10:29
Speaker
That was his first movie.
01:10:31
Speaker
Well, Dark Star technically, but yeah.
01:10:33
Speaker
Dark Star is an hour long, you know, and it's more Dan O'Bannon's movie than his in some ways.
01:10:37
Speaker
Yeah.
01:10:40
Speaker
And if anybody wants to be a real freak, you can listen to all of Blank Checks talking about John Carpenter, which is great.
01:10:47
Speaker
Great.
01:10:47
Speaker
So listen to the fog episode personally, because I think they're not the guest they had on.
01:10:52
Speaker
I am mad because John Carpenter has not replied to my DM.
01:10:55
Speaker
Dude.
01:10:58
Speaker
It's so fucked up.
01:10:59
Speaker
You are the horror master.
01:11:00
Speaker
You praised him.
01:11:01
Speaker
He can't even give you a fucking like on your message.
01:11:05
Speaker
He hasn't even read it.
01:11:06
Speaker
We are entitled to celebrities reading our DMs.
01:11:09
Speaker
Yeah.
01:11:10
Speaker
Yeah.
01:11:11
Speaker
You know what?
01:11:12
Speaker
For all like 12 of you who are listening this far to the episode, get in John Carpenter's
Humor and Clarifications on Social Media and Horror Icons
01:11:17
Speaker
DMs.
01:11:17
Speaker
Tell him to come on PGW.
01:11:18
Speaker
Yeah, come on.
01:11:19
Speaker
PGW.
01:11:20
Speaker
If he gets on, we'll give everybody who listens to this $5.
01:11:23
Speaker
I'll talk about fucking Fallout with John Carpenter.
01:11:25
Speaker
That is at the Horror Master on all social media platforms.
01:11:30
Speaker
Yeah.
01:11:30
Speaker
Don't bomb him.
01:11:31
Speaker
Social media bomb him.
01:11:33
Speaker
Not real bombs.
01:11:34
Speaker
Yeah, he's not on Letterboxd.
01:11:36
Speaker
Don't message him on Letterboxd.
01:11:37
Speaker
That's going to some woman in Kentucky.
01:11:41
Speaker
You said the word woman with so much vitriol that I... Oh, stop.
01:11:47
Speaker
Some woman in Connecticut.
01:11:49
Speaker
Some broad...
01:11:51
Speaker
It's like, have you guys seen that Mike Barbarian's status special where there's that guy in the crowd who's like, yeah, I got arrested by a woman cop.
01:11:59
Speaker
And Mike Barbarian's like, I don't like how you just said woman cop.
Halloween Plans and Horror Movie Marathon Preparation
01:12:04
Speaker
And the last episode of the month is, it'll be a found footage episode.
01:12:09
Speaker
I've been thinking about this a lot.
01:12:11
Speaker
I found that it's in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
01:12:15
Speaker
Found footage.
01:12:16
Speaker
Yeah.
01:12:16
Speaker
Hey, hey, hey, I'm having zing, zingo.
01:12:20
Speaker
So we're going to do a found footage episode, and the crux of that episode, we'll be talking about the Blair Witch Project, which I think is a masterpiece.
01:12:29
Speaker
Technically, it's a sequel, dude.
01:12:32
Speaker
I can't wait to watch Frog Garden.
01:12:33
Speaker
That movie stinks.
01:12:36
Speaker
God, that movie's bad.
01:12:37
Speaker
I think it was a low on this pod that I did.
01:12:39
Speaker
It was.
01:12:39
Speaker
Probably so.
01:12:40
Speaker
Speaking of which.
01:12:41
Speaker
And when we're talking about it, I think it is a film that just continues to reveal more and more and more about America, about fear, about what works in found footage and what doesn't.
01:12:51
Speaker
Great movie.
01:12:51
Speaker
It'll be really fucking fun.
01:12:52
Speaker
Can't wait to talk.
01:12:52
Speaker
It's going to be awesome.
01:12:53
Speaker
October's going to be great.
01:12:54
Speaker
It's going to be a good month.
01:12:56
Speaker
We each have full 31 movie watch lists of horror movies for the month.
01:12:59
Speaker
I've already watched two.
01:13:00
Speaker
I got an early jump.
01:13:01
Speaker
You should post those on the Letterboxd if anybody wants to.
01:13:06
Speaker
I'll post screen.
01:13:07
Speaker
Send me screenshots.
01:13:08
Speaker
I'll post them on the Instagram.
01:13:09
Speaker
Okay.
01:13:09
Speaker
Yeah, I've also, I've got like, I think I'm at technically 36, but that's because there's some rewatches in there.
01:13:15
Speaker
I wanted to try to get 31 I've never seen before.
01:13:18
Speaker
That's my thing.
01:13:19
Speaker
I have 31 I've never seen, and then plus rewatches and the stuff for the pod.
01:13:22
Speaker
Yeah, I don't have any rewatches on mine.
01:13:24
Speaker
I have 31 that I haven't seen before, but I'm watching something, you know, I started early.
01:13:29
Speaker
Yeah, I need to get the rewatches.
01:13:31
Speaker
Yeah, I have not had the chance to get to get on the jump.
01:13:34
Speaker
I've been I've been a lazy boy.
01:13:35
Speaker
We'll have time, you know, a lot of days in a month.
01:13:38
Speaker
Well, let's high and low
Film Critiques: Moonstruck, Wolf's, and It Follows
01:13:41
Speaker
it.
01:13:41
Speaker
Listener, if you don't know, the Akira Kurosawa high and low is where each of us will talk about the best piece of media we've consumed that week and the worst piece of media we've consumed that week.
01:13:49
Speaker
We'll go around in a circle or rather.
01:13:51
Speaker
I'll tell somebody to start and then they'll popcorn it and we'll figure it out.
01:13:55
Speaker
Austin, I would love to hear from you.
01:13:56
Speaker
Sure.
01:13:58
Speaker
My high is I watched Moonstruck for the first time.
01:14:03
Speaker
Amazing.
01:14:04
Speaker
Which is fucking unbelievable.
01:14:07
Speaker
It's like I've I've heard my entire life that this is like an iconic, great movie.
01:14:12
Speaker
And I was like, yeah, I'll get to it.
01:14:15
Speaker
First of all, Cher, call me hottest woman who ever lived.
01:14:19
Speaker
I cannot believe how gorgeous she is in this movie and also so good.
01:14:23
Speaker
It's very funny to me to cast her and Olympia Dukakis, two iconic Greek women playing the most Italian people you've ever seen.
01:14:31
Speaker
But they pull it off in spades.
01:14:34
Speaker
incredible script incredible nicholas cage performance um so heartfelt and sweet and funny and comes together like a farce at the end where like you have just classic farce stuff like where all the characters meet in a room and all the problems get resolved and it's like it's just it's a perfect like cut diamond um great opera stuff in this movie um and very new york which is always my favorite i love i love a good new york movie so
01:15:03
Speaker
Highly, highly recommend checking out Moonstruck if you haven't seen it.
01:15:07
Speaker
And then my low, which is probably a low for a couple of us, is Wolf's.
01:15:13
Speaker
John Watts' Wolf's, which just absolutely can eat a bag of dicks.
01:15:20
Speaker
It...
01:15:21
Speaker
I don't know how you make a movie that boring and inane with people that talented, but he pulled it off.
01:15:28
Speaker
None of the talented people are very good in it, particularly Brad Pitt is sleepwalking through this one.
01:15:34
Speaker
And sometimes a lot of times in Brad Pitt sleepwalking, I'm still entertained because he's Brad Pitt and I like looking at him.
01:15:40
Speaker
But this time could not be less entertained.
01:15:43
Speaker
I was so bored.
01:15:44
Speaker
I watched it in two chunks.
01:15:47
Speaker
It's probably
01:15:50
Speaker
Except for in a violent nature, it might be my low of the year so far, just because of the caliber of performer and talent on screen and just the how little they're able to, you know, pull water from a stone.
01:16:05
Speaker
And so I yeah, the wolf is my low and I would love to hear from Zach.
01:16:11
Speaker
Yeah, I'll leave the substance out of this, but I had a great time with it.
01:16:16
Speaker
I did start my horror watches already, and that includes some high and low stuff.
01:16:21
Speaker
My low would probably be the ending of It Follows.
01:16:25
Speaker
I know we had a little controversy in the group chat, but... Is there a controversy in the group chat?
01:16:30
Speaker
We had a little controversy.
01:16:33
Speaker
These three fucking losers don't like the ending of It Follows.
01:16:37
Speaker
I've never seen it.
01:16:38
Speaker
I've never seen it.
01:16:38
Speaker
Jerry, what do you think about It Follows?
01:16:41
Speaker
Yeah.
01:16:42
Speaker
I like that it was about teenagers.
01:16:47
Speaker
This is setting Joe up to do a Jerry impression.
01:16:50
Speaker
It's literally me D waiting in alley-oop and then him just Tomahawk.
01:16:55
Speaker
Yeah.
01:16:55
Speaker
Like my Jerry impression is that it's not good, but you just, you get to the heart.
01:17:00
Speaker
You get to the heart.
01:17:00
Speaker
I'm just getting, I'm doing a high pitch, high pitch voice.
01:17:03
Speaker
And I'm talking about him wanting to fuck 16 year olds.
01:17:06
Speaker
It's perfect.
01:17:07
Speaker
It's perfect.
01:17:10
Speaker
The right side of history is at the end of that movie.
01:17:12
Speaker
It is not that good.
01:17:13
Speaker
Honorable mention, I rewatched Scream last night and that's just a perfect fucking movie.
01:17:21
Speaker
The intro to Scream is probably one of the all-timer horror movie intros.
01:17:28
Speaker
It's one of the best horror movie called Opens of all time.
01:17:30
Speaker
I remembered it being good, but kind of just like, yeah, sure, it's just a fun movie that's always been around.
01:17:36
Speaker
But no, it's genuinely perfect.
01:17:38
Speaker
It's so fun and funny.
01:17:40
Speaker
It's Wes Craven coming at horror from another angle.
01:17:44
Speaker
Nightmare on Elm Street is fucking fantastical.
01:17:47
Speaker
It's surreal.
01:17:48
Speaker
And Scream is so grounded.
01:17:51
Speaker
The scene in the bathroom...
01:17:54
Speaker
where she's hiding and you're just like watching the boot like the shoes under the under it's it's so it's structured like a scooby-doo episode yeah a good for sure yeah yeah but that isn't my high because i'd be an absolute i am an absolute dumbass but i'd be even more of one if i did not um shout out to casablanca as my high
01:18:18
Speaker
I had seen this movie technically before, but not really.
01:18:24
Speaker
I didn't remember anything about it.
01:18:25
Speaker
Interesting.
01:18:25
Speaker
What was that context like?
01:18:27
Speaker
It was just on a small TV with an X, and it wasn't even that we were making out or anything during the movie.
01:18:33
Speaker
It was just like, I just wasn't thinking about the movie.
01:18:36
Speaker
What were you thinking about?
01:18:39
Speaker
Just apple trees.
01:18:40
Speaker
Apple trees, baby.
01:18:41
Speaker
Strange?
01:18:41
Speaker
Yeah.
01:18:45
Speaker
Just to sleep at the wheel, Austin John.
01:18:47
Speaker
But yeah, Casablanca is as good as they say, folks.
01:18:55
Speaker
God damn it.
01:18:57
Speaker
I'm in the pussy on cruise control.
01:18:59
Speaker
Jesus Christ.
01:19:01
Speaker
Call me speed two, baby.
01:19:05
Speaker
I'm Jason Patrick on a boat.
01:19:07
Speaker
If I'm in the pussy under 50 miles per hour, I will explode.
01:19:13
Speaker
I can go hands off on the highway with the pussy.
01:19:18
Speaker
I want to hear.
01:19:20
Speaker
She got that Tesla self-driving pussy.
01:19:24
Speaker
That pussy's got terrible build quality.
01:19:27
Speaker
I want to hear Joe try to do his high and low without putting a joke in it right now.
01:19:32
Speaker
Easy, bitch.
01:19:33
Speaker
Oh, I'm dying.
01:19:34
Speaker
That was so funny.
01:19:35
Speaker
My low of the week was also Wolf's fucking... I mean, it's just such an insulting movie.
01:19:43
Speaker
And also there's so many people in letterbox reviewing it like three out of five and being like, yo, this is like, this is like the next oceans movie.
01:19:50
Speaker
If you thought this movie is in the same fucking ballpark as oceans 11, you need to, you have to bleach your eyes.
01:19:57
Speaker
Just kill yourself.
01:19:58
Speaker
It's the law.
01:20:01
Speaker
This movie.
01:20:02
Speaker
And I will explain to you why it's bad.
01:20:04
Speaker
I will intellectualize why it doesn't work.
01:20:08
Speaker
it is a movie that thinks it has a Soderbergh script and thinks it has a Fincher directing style.
01:20:16
Speaker
It's like, okay, I'm going to do a Soderbergh script and direct it like David Fincher.
01:20:21
Speaker
Those two do not work together.
01:20:24
Speaker
Yeah.
01:20:24
Speaker
You cannot do an austere technical thriller with dialogue that's supposed to be funny.
01:20:34
Speaker
Yeah.
01:20:34
Speaker
Because David Fincher did that
01:20:37
Speaker
Yeah, but most people didn't get it.
01:20:39
Speaker
People didn't think The Killer was funny because it was a Fincher movie.
01:20:43
Speaker
I mean, I'm not trying to be greater than thou.
01:20:45
Speaker
I thought it was hilarious, but you have to understand why.
01:20:50
Speaker
That movie works because of its subtlety.
01:20:52
Speaker
Wolves has none.
01:20:53
Speaker
Yeah.
01:20:54
Speaker
The editing, there are several moments, specifically in the first few scenes, that are supposed to be funny, but they are edited so poorly that the jokes don't land.
01:21:03
Speaker
It sucks.
01:21:04
Speaker
It sucks so bad.
01:21:06
Speaker
All of the juice of the jokes is sucked out by the cinematography and editing.
01:21:12
Speaker
It's so fucking sterile.
01:21:17
Speaker
And Austin, like you're saying, Clooney and Pitt are both kind of sleepwalking through this movie.
01:21:22
Speaker
They're getting a check, and I get it.
01:21:24
Speaker
Yeah, sure.
01:21:25
Speaker
I will say that the kid in this movie, Austin Abrams, I think is- He's quite good.
01:21:30
Speaker
He is good with what he has, and my review in Letterboxd is that I would kill to see the three leads of this in a good movie.
01:21:35
Speaker
Yeah.
01:21:37
Speaker
He's very good on Euphoria.
01:21:38
Speaker
I'm out on Euphoria now, but he's good on Euphoria.
01:21:43
Speaker
Is he related to J.J.
01:21:44
Speaker
and Gracie?
01:21:46
Speaker
If only.
01:21:47
Speaker
That wasn't like me trying to brag a joke.
01:21:49
Speaker
I just know that Gracie Abrams has a fucking career because she's JJ's kid.
01:21:53
Speaker
Yeah, and she's not talented and her music sucks.
01:21:56
Speaker
She's fucking jacked, dude.
01:21:58
Speaker
And she's fucking Paul Meskel.
01:22:00
Speaker
Bro, she could bench press all four of us.
01:22:02
Speaker
I think anyone with enough persistence could fuck Paul Meskel.
01:22:07
Speaker
It's not hard.
01:22:08
Speaker
I saw somebody say she's training for when Paul Meskel's bitch ass runs.
01:22:11
Speaker
She's like fucking Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2.
01:22:17
Speaker
Nice.
01:22:18
Speaker
That's great.
01:22:19
Speaker
My highs, I have a couple of honorable mentions.
01:22:21
Speaker
My first honorable mention is Jackass the movie.
01:22:23
Speaker
What a wonderful time I had with watching this.
01:22:25
Speaker
It was my first time.
01:22:26
Speaker
I never had seen it before.
01:22:26
Speaker
It's a wonderful movie.
01:22:28
Speaker
Love it.
01:22:30
Speaker
My other honorable mention is, Austin, on your recommendation, I watched Snack Shack.
01:22:35
Speaker
Yeah, baby.
01:22:35
Speaker
Let's go.
01:22:36
Speaker
It's so good.
01:22:37
Speaker
It's great with the movies.
01:22:38
Speaker
I love it.
01:22:38
Speaker
It's such a good movie.
01:22:39
Speaker
Still got to watch it.
01:22:40
Speaker
I'm the only one.
01:22:42
Speaker
But my actual high for this week is a little film by a guy named Ken Russell called Lair of the White Worm.
01:22:54
Speaker
The only other movie I'd seen by this guy is Altered States, which is also fucking fantastic.
01:22:58
Speaker
Fucking awesome movie.
01:23:00
Speaker
But Layer of the White Worm is silly, hampy, so horny.
01:23:05
Speaker
It is just otherworldly levels of horny, this movie.
01:23:09
Speaker
I mean, truly, you're watching one of the hottest women to ever walk the earth slink around in a snake costume.
01:23:18
Speaker
Sick.
01:23:20
Speaker
She spits venom on a crucifix.
01:23:23
Speaker
I mean, there's fucking Hugh Grant does a slow-mo 360 sword chop.
01:23:34
Speaker
Sick.
01:23:35
Speaker
It's just a perfect campy.
01:23:38
Speaker
I cannot wait to talk about this in the full horror episode because it's in a lot of full horror lists and it kind of fits the bill of full horror, especially in context of The Wailing, which is my honorable mention low of the week.
01:23:49
Speaker
I fucking hated that movie.
01:23:50
Speaker
I'm excited to talk about it.
01:23:54
Speaker
So those are my high and low and red round us out, buddy.
01:23:57
Speaker
Yeah.
01:23:59
Speaker
I will do my low because I don't think I have to belabor it.
01:24:04
Speaker
I have texted Zach about this in a different group chat.
Sports Frustrations and Music Appreciation
01:24:09
Speaker
The Georgia Bulldogs are a team that make me utterly miserable.
01:24:13
Speaker
And I have to say this.
01:24:16
Speaker
I recently made a joke in the same group chat after Baylor had lost.
01:24:20
Speaker
And I said, boys, welcome to Georgia fandom.
01:24:23
Speaker
And somebody was like, what the fuck?
01:24:25
Speaker
You guys have won two national championships in the last four seasons.
01:24:27
Speaker
And I was like, no, no, no, no.
01:24:28
Speaker
I'm not saying like this is my experience of like losing.
01:24:31
Speaker
I understand that the last four seasons have been truly like next level.
01:24:35
Speaker
In the last three seasons, the Georgia Bulldogs have only in the last.
01:24:38
Speaker
I'm sorry.
01:24:39
Speaker
The last four years, the Georgia Bulldogs have only lost three games.
01:24:42
Speaker
All of them have been to the University of Alabama.
01:24:47
Speaker
It is truly like a... It makes me disgustingly angry.
01:24:54
Speaker
And it's just like, and I, my dear friend, Rachel coworker of mine, I'm very sorry for being a big bitch at your birthday party and pulling my phone out while people are wanting to play drinking games.
01:25:06
Speaker
And I'm staring at my phone for the final minute and a half of the game, just like in utter misery.
01:25:13
Speaker
Sorry, Rachel.
01:25:14
Speaker
Love you.
01:25:15
Speaker
Uh,
01:25:16
Speaker
So, yeah, the Georgia Bulldogs.
01:25:20
Speaker
The Falcons won today.
01:25:21
Speaker
I guess they beat the fucking Saints.
01:25:22
Speaker
Fuck the Saints.
01:25:24
Speaker
Okay.
01:25:25
Speaker
So, my honorable mention high... Actually, I'm going to say my honorable mention high is Blue Ruin.
01:25:33
Speaker
I've been catching up on the Sonia stuff.
01:25:37
Speaker
My Letterboxd review...
01:25:39
Speaker
And I know that people love when we just read our own writing.
01:25:43
Speaker
They do.
01:25:45
Speaker
I said, sometimes you're just from a shitty place full of shitty people.
01:25:49
Speaker
And I like that it's a very specific version of this area of Virginia, specifically around Charlottesville, but they don't get to show the beauty of UVA or something.
01:25:58
Speaker
It's like, there are shitty, shitty, shitty, shitty people who live in this town.
01:26:03
Speaker
And frankly, even your kind of shitty.
01:26:07
Speaker
Like, making Blair's character, like, talking about, like, getting fucked up with his buddies and hanging out with strippers and, like... Just abandoning everyone who cares about him.
01:26:17
Speaker
Abandoning everyone who cares about him, putting his family in jeopardy.
01:26:22
Speaker
The understanding of, like, what he actually understands revenge to be like.
01:26:25
Speaker
I really love that that's the tone this film takes.
01:26:28
Speaker
Saulnier is great with location.
01:26:30
Speaker
He's great at getting to the heart of what these places are like, whether it be Louisiana or Virginia or wherever.
01:26:37
Speaker
He's great.
01:26:39
Speaker
I was quite taken by it.
01:26:41
Speaker
I love the pacing.
01:26:43
Speaker
Yeah, very well paced.
01:26:45
Speaker
I saw a review of which somebody was like,
01:26:51
Speaker
it was Esther... I can't remember her last name.
01:26:53
Speaker
Zuckerman?
01:26:54
Speaker
No, Esther Zuckerman.
01:26:55
Speaker
She's a much smaller reviewer in terms of her footprint.
01:26:58
Speaker
But she wrote a review of which she was like... And she's been on Letterboxd for over a decade, for a very long time.
01:27:05
Speaker
So this review is probably seven years old at this point.
01:27:09
Speaker
But she talked about how there is something to be said about the craft of the film and that it looks very beautiful and it's really well made.
01:27:16
Speaker
But she talked about the pacing...
01:27:20
Speaker
and how weird it feels that, like, it really takes time in the beginning, and then it feels really rushed, which I get, but I also think that that plays into the fact that, like,
01:27:32
Speaker
gunfights aren't really gunfights for most people.
01:27:35
Speaker
Like, unless you are, like, two trained professionals and you are at distance with automatic weapons, is gunfights usually look like a person is going to shoot you and usually not center mass.
01:27:45
Speaker
They're usually not going to kill you on the first shot.
01:27:49
Speaker
It's going to be bloody and it's going to be hard and it's going to be fast.
01:27:53
Speaker
And I think that that's... I think it's a really interesting choice.
01:27:57
Speaker
I really liked making Blair in that movie.
01:27:59
Speaker
Yeah.
01:27:59
Speaker
Um...
01:28:01
Speaker
And I made a last minute pivot because I wrote down Blue Ruin as my high.
01:28:04
Speaker
But I actually think my high for media I consumed this week is listening to the new Christian Lee Hudson record.
01:28:11
Speaker
Yeah, baby.
01:28:12
Speaker
It's a really great record.
01:28:15
Speaker
The boys finally got me on the MJ Lenderman kick.
01:28:18
Speaker
And then immediately Christian Lee Hudson put out a new record.
01:28:21
Speaker
And yeah, it's great.
01:28:23
Speaker
Beauty School might be my new song of the year.
01:28:26
Speaker
I've listened to it so many times.
01:28:28
Speaker
Excited to.
01:28:30
Speaker
Yeah, and Hudson's one of those guys that I think, he's got one of those voices that on some songs, you're like, this really fits in the context of the song.
01:28:39
Speaker
And there are songs where it doesn't at all, but his songwriting, his actual musicianship, the band that he plays with.
01:28:47
Speaker
He's scary good at guitar.
01:28:48
Speaker
Of the songs.
01:28:49
Speaker
Yeah, he really is.
01:28:50
Speaker
And his lyricism is so good that you're like, I don't even care that you're kind of crooning over the song in a way that
01:28:57
Speaker
I wouldn't have done.
01:28:58
Speaker
If I was going to write this song, I think I would have put it in a different key.
01:29:03
Speaker
He's just got it.
01:29:05
Speaker
Great record.
01:29:06
Speaker
I think Beauty School is next level.
01:29:09
Speaker
After Hours is a song I will listen to and cry every single time.
01:29:14
Speaker
Christian Lee Hudson's Paradise Pop 10.
01:29:17
Speaker
Love it.
01:29:18
Speaker
That is it.
01:29:19
Speaker
That has been the...
01:29:22
Speaker
Megalopolis Megathon with Paddington Gone Wild.
01:29:26
Speaker
Megacoccolis.
01:29:28
Speaker
Megacoccolis.
01:29:28
Speaker
Boys, thank you for joining me.
01:29:30
Speaker
Thank you, Red.
01:29:31
Speaker
Happy to be here.
01:29:32
Speaker
Wow Platinum signing off.
01:29:35
Speaker
Wow Platinum signing off.
01:29:36
Speaker
Listener, we love you.
01:29:37
Speaker
Thanks for listening.
01:29:38
Speaker
Love you, bye.