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A 5-Star Discussion with James Mottram: "The Creator", Film Journalism, and Best Sci-fi Movies of the Decade
70 Plays1 year ago
Graeme Brown sits down with renowned film journalist, James Mottram, to discuss his book "The Art of The Creator:" Designs of Futures Past". James also shares his origin story as a film journalist, and critic, along with how many movies he sees per year. James shares the story of a film he liked more than most, and also his addendum to the best sci-fi movies of the decade.
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Transcript
Introduction and Movie Recommendation
00:00:35
Speaker
And welcome to the Crawling Around My Brain podcast. I'm your host, Graham Brown. Great to have you all back with me this week. I have an awesome conversation teed up for you with film journalist and movie critic James Matrim. We have a chance to talk about a movie called The Creator, which I recently saw in the movie theater and I cannot recommend enough.
00:00:55
Speaker
You should go to the movie theater and see this movie. It's visually stunning. The audio is incredible. There's action. There's morality. There's humanity versus AI. And there's John David Washington, Denzel's son, for those of you that don't know. So there's a lot to like for the whole family. Do not wait for it to come out on streaming. Go to the movie theater and see this movie.
00:01:17
Speaker
Okay, so we have a chance to talk to James about that movie.
James Matrim's Book and Film Journalism Journey
00:01:21
Speaker
He has a book that's coming out about the creator on November 14th. And we also get the chance to pick his brain about his origin story, getting involved in film journalism. And he also gives us some tips for a few other movies that we should see as well. So great conversation.
00:01:36
Speaker
And I also want to thank everyone for their support for last week's episode, our interview with Mike Lemieux from Houses with History. That show has done very well, and I'd be remiss if I did not thank my Australian fans for keeping this podcast so popular down under. Okay, and with that, without further ado, let's dive right into my conversation with film journalist James Matrim.
00:02:09
Speaker
Welcome to the podcast, James Motrum. Thanks for coming on. Thanks very much for having me, Graham. Absolutely. Well, I really appreciate you coming on this week. I teed it up in my intro, but just to give a quick bio about yourself, you are an author and a film journalist. I've written several books about film. You also
00:02:31
Speaker
We'll do film critique and often interview based journalism around film. Is that correct so far? That is spot on. Yeah, that is exactly how I would describe myself. Okay, incredible. That's great. We're off to a great start. I would say reading through some of the books that you've written, a few caught my attention for sure.
00:02:51
Speaker
The first one was The Making of Memento, which is a classic movie, I'll be honest. I haven't seen it in a while, but it was kind of very influential and certainly memorable. So I saw that you wrote a book about that. Another one that caught my attention was Die Hard, The Ultimate Visual History, because again, growing up, the Die Hard movies were kind of a core cinema.
00:03:16
Speaker
for me. So that was very interesting. And then also you've written some other books, but one other notable one was Jurassic Park, The Ultimate Visual History. Again, and I saw an interview that you did talking about that, but Jurassic Park just the some of the cinematic elements in addition to the way they took a book and put it into the into film where we're really
00:03:36
Speaker
groundbreaking, I think, at the time. So that was very cool. And the way that I found you is that I recently saw this movie, The Creator, in the movie theater, which we're going to dive into in a little bit.
Exploring 'The Creator' and Film Fan Passion
00:03:49
Speaker
But I was just blown away by that movie. And I noticed that you have a book that is coming out on November 14. That's called The Creator, The Designs of Futures Past. So just thrilled to talk to you about that. But
00:04:05
Speaker
I know I didn't list all of your works, but do any of them stand out to you? I know that might be like choosing from children, but do any of them stand out to you or any that I may have missed that you would also recommend? Well, let's talk about the ones you mentioned, because you definitely hit on some key ones there over time. I mean, the Memento one was, I think, the third book I did. And it came out around 2001, I think.
00:04:34
Speaker
Yeah, I sort of, I suppose I owe a great deal to Jeremy Theobold, who's an actor and producer that worked with, he was at college with Christopher Nolan, who obviously now is this enormous Hollywood director, and they made following their first, well, Christopher Nolan's first film. And from that,
00:04:54
Speaker
Faber and Faber, this publishers in the UK, they wanted to publish the screenplay of Memento and Following. So we did that, or they did that, and I sort of contributed by doing an interview with Chris and Jeremy, which kind of went in alongside the printed screenplays.
00:05:13
Speaker
And from that, I then was lucky enough to be able to get to do the Memento book, which was, you know, the film was gathering kind of attention and heat at the time. And strangely, I've just reread that. I don't reread my own books. That sounds weird. But but I mean, that is very narcissistic. I don't do that. But
00:05:34
Speaker
101 Films, which is a company based in the UK, they've just sort of released Memento, a brand new Blu-ray package version of Memento with an essay that I wrote and a commentary I did with a sort of fellow filmmaker, a critic called Sean Hogan. And they've done a fantastic job, I have to say, it looks brilliant. And so hence the reason I went back and looked at that book, because I kind of needed to
00:06:01
Speaker
a bit like you, you haven't seen it for a while. I hadn't seen it for a while. And to go back into that film again, I'm always amazed how sort of deep it is and how much there is to get into, how much there is to play with. And I really enjoyed going back again, actually, into that. So yeah, that is a favourite of mine, that book, because
00:06:24
Speaker
It was a launch pad really for Chris's career. I've done a couple of other books based on his movies since. I did one on Dunkirk and one on Tenet, both published by Insight, who are the publishers of the creator book that you mentioned, and the Jurassic Park books.
00:06:45
Speaker
and the Die Hard book as well. I mean the Die Hard one was a strange project because I took over from another writer who'd already started it and done a lot of work but then had to sort of depart the project just due to his kind of work commitments that he had. So I kind of picked it up
00:07:04
Speaker
and ran with it and that was a very strange experience. First of all, getting yourself up to speed on all this incredible research this other writer had done and then having to shape it yourself and improve the bits that weren't working and don't touch the bits that were brilliant and there were lots of those. That was an interesting, quite stressful project.
00:07:28
Speaker
And then the Jurassic one, well, you mentioned Jurassic Park, so that covered the first three movies, the Jurassic Park movies. Simultaneously, I wrote one covering the Jurassic World movies. So effectively, I was writing two of those ultimate visual history books at the same time. And that was my lockdown pandemic project where, you know, all the cinemas were shut in the UK because of Covid and
00:07:53
Speaker
there wasn't a great deal to do. So I said to my editor, well, if you've got any ideas, now's the time. And he suggested Jurassic.
00:08:02
Speaker
Yeah, so I mean, that was that was also quite stressful. But but, you know, I really felt a lot of fun to do. And I've really discovered, I'd say, well, maybe alongside Star Wars, the community, the Jurassic community are they're just so devoted to those films and the wider
00:08:26
Speaker
paraphernalia, I suppose is not really the right word, but the kind of wider, you know, you have the comics and the toys and, and you've got fan groups devoted to all of that stuff as well. And I didn't really know that before I started, I wasn't as aware of it as I am now. And
00:08:43
Speaker
Yeah, you know, it's even though there's, well, who knows if they'll make another Jurassic film, you know, the last one made a billion dollars, which, you know, is not not small change. But who knows what they'll do. You know, they had the animated show on Netflix that not that long ago. So it'd be interesting to see what direction they take. But that community is very much alive and supporting anything new Jurassic related.
00:09:08
Speaker
So you just touched on a lot of stuff that I want to get into. And like I said, I know we're going to get into the creator in a little bit, but I asked you ahead of time if it'd be okay if we dove into a little bit of your background. But what you talked about, I mean, you know, film fans are extremely passionate, right? And so when you're dealing with, uh, you know, there's a sense of ownership in some sense, especially to peop some of these, the iconic titles that you're talking about that you've written books around. So, um, and I know in addition to the authoring, you've done some,
00:09:36
Speaker
I mentioned some film critique as well and so I was laughing because last night I was watching the Sunday Night Football game in the United States and there was an advertisement that came on for the new The Killer movie with Michael Fassbender and it you know it goes through the whole preview and then at the end it's showing all the reviews and yours was the last one that they go to before it cuts to where it's playing in theaters and I think it might be on Netflix ultimately.
00:10:01
Speaker
That's actually nice to hear because it's quite strange. When you write a review, because I saw that film in Venice at the Venice Film Festival, and you had to review it immediately, and I wrote the review, and then you get publicists will, you know, they have to sort of ask your permission if they can use an extract. And, you know, obviously, I said yes to whatever they, you know, all the bits of the review they were suggesting, I was fine with that. But then you never normally see that stuff again. It's funny.
00:10:30
Speaker
Yeah, it's I mean, I'm not saying they don't get sometimes they don't get used because I guess they get lots of reviews they can pick from. But and often in the UK, I never see these things. And you think, why have I just bothered, you know, giving my permission that it's not been used? So it's quite gratifying to know it has been used somewhere. I was I was laughing. I was literally like it was a late game here. It was near the end of the game. I was I was laying in bed and I showed my wife and I screencapped it. I rewound it. I should have taken a shot of it. If I see it again, I will do that. And I'll send it your way.
00:11:00
Speaker
Please stay. But, you know, I was, I was wondering, so, you know, you've obviously, how long have you been doing this? That's the first question. How long, what got you into it? Like, were you just a super passionate fan of film or were you, you know, more of a journalist and then you just kind of start notice that you were attending towards film or did you send out like when you were young,
00:11:19
Speaker
younger just said, I'm going to do this. This is what I'm going to make my career out of. You know, I love this. That's a good question. I mean, I was definitely a movie fan in my teenage years. I lived in the sort of East Sussex, which is kind of you'll have heard of the Battle of Hastings, right? It's a famous battle in it's one of the most famous battles of all time. Hastings is about in terms of in Britain anyway.
00:11:43
Speaker
Hastings is about 10 miles from where I grew up in my teenage years in a kind of remote village where not much happened. And the best, you know, this is obviously way, way before streaming and all this sort of stuff. So you had a couple of maybe one cinema in Hastings, and then a little van that would drive around with VHS, you know, rentals, and it would stop outside your house and you could go and, you know, choose one and you'd have it for a week. That's how I saw aliens, for example, the James Cameron movie.
00:12:13
Speaker
Great. Yeah, fantastic movie. So, you know, I and then I remember when I bought a car, I could finally drive to the video rental store and start like this is there was nothing else to do. Right. Right. So so I was a movie fan as a teenager and then I did an English degree and then a journalism kind of course. And during that course, and this is I'd say really good advice for anyone who wants to be a journalist of whatever
00:12:40
Speaker
you know, whatever, whatever your interest is, the kind of course tutor was like, well, you really should choose a specialism, especially if you're going to be a freelancer. So I chose film, I was always interested in film. And one of the college exercises was to write
00:13:00
Speaker
a piece on something that could be printed there and then, which is quite difficult because you don't really have any contacts. You know, you're aware of what's in the newspapers, but that's already been and gone effectively, you need to get ahead of the game and print something that could run there and then. So that was quite a tricky idea. But
00:13:19
Speaker
At the time, this is going to show you how old I am now. At the time, Natural Born Killers, the Oliver Stone movie was around, but it wasn't being released in the UK. They were sort of suspended due to censorship problems. I recall this whole deal about the NC-17 rating, and I remember that was a huge deal because of some of the themes of that movie.
00:13:41
Speaker
Yeah, very much. And it was a huge deal in the UK. Well, we had a lot of problems around that time with censorship. I mean, films like Reservoir Dogs, that was a little bit earlier, but another Tarantino film, of course, but all the Tarantino scripted natural born killers. Anyway, I ended up writing a piece about
00:14:00
Speaker
you know, the sort of for all around the fact that it wasn't out yet, and there was all this sort of censorship stuff. So I wrote that. And that was my, you know, that was, you know, I use that for my college course, but then I managed to sell that piece to a kind of freebie magazine that we used to have in the UK called TNT, which was a kind of magazine dedicated to the Aussie expats, the Australians that lived in London, and there were lots of those still are. And
00:14:24
Speaker
So they took that piece, which was a great delight, great surprise. And then about, I don't know, two or three months later, I did some work experience at Screen International, which is one of the big trade publications on film in the UK. It's Light Variety and Hollywood Reporter.
00:14:40
Speaker
And I had a nice nice week there. And at the end, they gave me an invite to a screening on like a letter because that's used to get these letters through the post way before email. And they were like, you know, if you want to go, go along. So I went to the screening and it was it was Mike Newell's first film since Four Weddings and a funeral. It was called An Awfully Big Adventure. It's another movie with Hugh Grant. So I saw that and it kind of dawned on me. Oh, my God, this is how journalists see movies in advance. I mean, I've never really thought about it before.
00:15:10
Speaker
So I got back in touch with that magazine TNT that took my other piece. And I said, Do you need a review? I've just seen this film. And remarkably, they did. They didn't have a reviewer and that or regular reviewer. And that is kind of very unheard of. So I kind of stepped in the breach, obviously reviewed that for them and then started I was that I then became their reviewer. And that was my start. But it took a long time before I then branched out
00:15:41
Speaker
beyond just, I mean, that was pocket money, basically, it was just, you know, I was sort of doing another job at the time, but it was fun. I was getting into movies, seeing some great stuff. I can remember, I worked in a department store, and I can remember skiving off at
00:15:58
Speaker
lunchtime to go and see Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys basically. I took a two hour lunch break instead of a one hour lunch break. But then there was a certain point, you're like, well, you've got to try and make this work. So you try and turn it into your career. And I started going to film festivals. I went to the London Film Festival first in
00:16:20
Speaker
I think it was 97, 98, that sort of time, you know, and then you start doing a few interviews and, and, you know, you build it up from there really. And it's, it's kind of been that way ever since. It's amazing. I have to imagine there's people listening to this who that seems like a dream to them, right? Like that they're, they're, they're either watching movies and providing commentary or they're interviewing.
00:16:44
Speaker
directors. I mean, you've had, you've had some amazing interviews. Um, you already talked about Christopher Nolan and I know you have many others that you could talk to, speak to as well. I guess what's interesting though, is when I started looking up some of the stuff you've done, you have to see a ton of movies. Like you're, you're going to all the, it's not like you get to say, Oh, the creator looks interesting. I'm going to go hit that one. You're seeing basically everything, right? So do you have any idea off the top of your head how many reviews you've done of movies?
00:17:12
Speaker
Wow, that's a good question. I have no idea. I wouldn't say I'd sort of caveat that I haven't seen. I don't see everything. I don't know how much gets released in America on a weekly basis. But in the UK, you could easily have 10 movies come out, especially now there's the whole digital
00:17:30
Speaker
sort of downloads thing. And you can't keep up with that many and you don't need to really. I mean, obviously, if someone asked me to review something and they're going to pay, then I'll obviously go and see it. There'll be things I want to see just out of my interest, which maybe I end up not getting to write about.
00:17:49
Speaker
uh and then there'll be a bunch of stuff that i just passes me by because you just haven't got the time or you can't make the screenings or whatever it is so but yeah i can i can't really tell you how many reviews i've written that's impossible but i do know for the last few years i've kept a count of how many films i see a year now that might be new films or
00:18:10
Speaker
or old movies that I've rewatched for some reason. I mean, I'm talking, again, roughly speaking, you're looking at about 350, 360 a year. So that's basically one a day. And that's not that bad. I know people naming no names. I know people that do 800 a year. And I'm not joking. And they'll see two or three things a day, you know, every day. And I don't know how they do it.
00:18:35
Speaker
I'm not entirely sure why they do it, but they do. But I can't, I need to do other things. I need to watch, you're watching, well, sorry, I call it American football, but you're watching football. I'm watching soccer. So, you know, our football. So I need to do a few other things apart from, apart from watching movies.
00:18:54
Speaker
Well, you have to stay well-rounded, right? Cause you bring all that into your, into your commentary. I imagine into your writing, that's gotta be, if you're just, we're in the movie theater all the time, that would probably be tough to do. I was going to ask you, you know, in a way you're watching this movie and then do you have like, is this an immediate reaction if you're doing a review, for instance, not a, not an interview book format, but if you're watching a movie, your provider view, are you watching the movie and then you're sitting down and you don't want any influence beyond that. And you just want to write it right away.
00:19:23
Speaker
Or do you kind of let it sink in, maybe read a few other things about the film and then dive into your review? How do you like your process? You don't have to go too deep, but I was just curious. That's interesting. Um, well, it will, it will vary. Like I mentioned earlier with the killer. So I think I saw that I was doing an interview with Fincher's cinematographer for that film. So I saw it a couple of days before the press screening in Venice.
00:19:49
Speaker
But so I had a couple of days to ruminate on it because the idea would be to get that review out before the embargo lifts or whether or rather as the embargo lifts.
Film Review Process and Gareth Edwards's Approach
00:20:01
Speaker
So when in the case of Venice, I think they allow you I'm trying to remember now because every festival is different. But I think it's 30 minutes into the official screening.
00:20:11
Speaker
That's when you can run your review. So the press screening would have been maybe the day before or that morning or something like that. But I've just because by chance I'd seen it a couple of days earlier, I had a little more time to sit on it and think about it.
00:20:25
Speaker
But I didn't really talk to, there weren't that many people that would have seen it at that point at handful that were doing interviews. But I didn't really have a chance to talk to people. And in a way, you don't want to do that because then you're going to start to get influenced by people. And of course, you couldn't read anything else because there was nothing else out there on it. So you just have to put your own stamp on it. And that's what you should be doing anyway.
00:20:47
Speaker
But yeah, sometimes you may not review it for a few weeks. And by then you may have read something by accident or you may be interested to read what other people have put. But again, you can't deny if you do that, that is going to be slightly influencing you even subconsciously. And you try, you need to resist that because you need to put your own voice on it. I mean, sometimes you see a film and you know instantly whether you love it or you hate it.
00:21:15
Speaker
trying to think. Does it ever happen where you were you review something this is this is kind of my follow up to this was where you're like oh my god that was incredible slam dunk and then you and then you publish it and then you find wow I'm actually totally in the minority on this one like people or vice versa where you're like man this is
00:21:35
Speaker
You know not not great and everyone raves about it. I'm sure that I think it was the second Fantastic Beasts movie, you know from the the spin-off of the Harry Potter films which I saw to review for a magazine I saw it before and
00:21:52
Speaker
you know, they have what they call multimedia press screenings, which is where you'd get people from written press and online and radio and TV. So like a whole, they rent out a whole big cinema and you know, but I saw that before that multimedia screening. So again, with only a handful of people in the room, didn't talk to anyone else. And you know, I'm not the world's biggest Harry Potter fan or anything like that. But I did quite enjoy that. Well, very much enjoy that film.
00:22:18
Speaker
gave it five stars I think if I'm remembering correctly like that's the top mark don't normally give out five stars very often and then noticed that everyone was ripping into it and I was like have I seen the same film as everyone else and I do remember my editor it is a long time after the review they know they they obviously ran the review as is they took me took me on my word sort of thing but um
00:22:43
Speaker
Yeah. And you're having a great day. Maybe it just spoke to you personally. I enjoyed it. I'd be interested, but it's funny if you go back and watch.
00:22:52
Speaker
So I was talking to about this to someone the other day, we were talking about the films of Paul Thomas Anderson. And so there will be blood, which is this person's, you know, thought that was his greatest film. Now I've gotten nothing against that. I think it's a wonderful film. But I've only ever watched it once. And I it was so sort of perfect for me at the time, and I saw it in the cinema, as you should.
00:23:17
Speaker
But I'm kind of like, I don't want to go back and watch it again. What if it spoils that memory of what it was like? And again, if sometimes if you watch a film for a second time, you're you've reflected on it differently, you're older, of course, and maybe your experiences are different. And yeah, you can definitely reverse. You know, I don't think there's any problem in retracting a review or your thoughts about a review down the line. Obviously, the reviewers run and that's it.
00:23:43
Speaker
But you have to go on your first reaction. But yeah, this is a terrible connection to that because what you're talking about is much more as much more of a
00:23:53
Speaker
of an education to it, but I will say like Yelp reviews. If I go to a great restaurant, some people you'll see will go back and do another review. It's like, no, you went the one time, give it the review. You had a great, you know, let's move on. I think there will be blood. Great movie. Don't know that I'd want to see it again. I mean, it's a pretty intense movie, right? Two. So you really have to be in the right mindset. I would think to see that a second time and maybe draw on new, new feelings for it. Yeah. I feel like the older, the older I get the,
00:24:21
Speaker
The less time I have to rewatch films I've already seen, unless it's like a comfort movie that you watch, you know, you've watched since you're a teenager and you just love watching it.
00:24:33
Speaker
like, for example, Goodfellas, which is kind of one of my all time favourite movies. That was on the other day. And obviously Scorsese is very much in the in the ether at the moment because of Killers of the Flower Moon. And I was kind of waiting for my friend to, you know, he was he was staying with me for the night. So it was just on in the background. And it's like I can watch that film from any moment.
00:24:55
Speaker
You know what I mean? And it was just highly rewatchable. Yeah, that's comfort, comfort viewing. But sort of a lot of films, let's talk about sticking on the Scorsese vibe, The Irishman, which I've only watched once. Now, I kind of enjoyed the film when I saw it. And I feel like I should revisit it. But it's a long, long movie. It's three and a half hours. Right. I could watch two other new movies in that time. Or, you know, I just it's time, isn't it? In the end, there's only so much time to watch everything.
00:25:24
Speaker
That one, I'll be honest, I started it and didn't make it through. I love the rest of his movies. I'm not like a cinephile or anything either, but I mean, obviously he's great and I would watch most things that came out. But for some reason, I've got two little kids. There's a lot going on. So for me to sit down for three and it takes a little bit. Well, I'm guessing you watched it on Netflix, right? I did. So it's obviously is how, you know, they're the ones that bankroll that film. And really a film like that, same with Killers of the Flower Moon, which is obviously will be on the Apple platform.
00:25:51
Speaker
Uh, I couldn't watch those kind of movies, movies at home. I mean, I could, but I would much rather, if you're going to devote to it, go to the cinema. This is my message for the day. Okay. We're going to hit on that. I know when you've got two small kids, obviously I grant you that. Yes. No, but it happened. It happened to be, and that's, and one of the reasons why I think here's my pivot to the creator, why I thought that I just wanted to talk to someone about this movie is because I have an older daughter as well, who's 10.
00:26:21
Speaker
And we were looking for a movie to go to, and it was like Saw X, which I was like, we're not gonna do that. And then it was like the Paw Patrol movie, and I'm like, we're not gonna do that. And I saw this movie title pop up, The Creator. I'll be honest, hadn't heard anything about it. I just saw that it was PG-13, so kind of in the right wheelhouse, right? I was like, might be interesting. And it didn't say that it was like, had anything terrible. So I was like, I feel safe bringing my daughter to this. And I looked at a really brief,
00:26:47
Speaker
right up about just what the plot was, which is in effect that there's a battle going on between humanity and AI in the future. And I was like, let's go.
00:27:02
Speaker
And I went and I was just so blown away by the movie. I couldn't believe one that, so if I was, if I was giving my James Mottram review, I don't know if I would be at five stars, but I left the movie theater and I was like, that's somewhere between four and five stars. We, my daughter and I talked about it for like 30 minutes afterwards. She's usually not that communicative about the things we've done. She was so pumped about it.
00:27:26
Speaker
The visuals were absolutely stunning. I think it's John David Washington, Denzel Sun, who's the star. I'm a big fan of his. I couldn't really believe that I hadn't heard anything about it. And so I'm like really rooting it on as a film. I want people to go see it. And so that's the reason I reached out to him. I was like, I have to talk to someone about this movie because I thought it was great.
00:27:48
Speaker
And I've read your reviews on it, but I guess, how did you get involved with the creator? Was that just a movie that you went and saw or were you already asked to do this book? And then that's how you got involved in the movie.
00:28:01
Speaker
Yeah, well, as mentioned already, Insight, who are an American based company, I've worked with them on a few titles now, and they have done a lot of stuff recently with New Regency, who are the production company behind The Creator, so they did
00:28:22
Speaker
trying to think what else they've done. They're the Northman. I think they did a book on the Northman, which was the Viking saga with Alexander Skarsgard. I wasn't involved in that. But you know, so they've been I think they've got one coming up on the bike riders. This is a book on the bike riders, which is Tom Hardy, Jodie Comer film.
00:28:42
Speaker
Austin Butler as well, the guy who played Elvis. So, you know, they're doing a lot of stuff, a lot of work with you. Well, they do a lot of work with all the studios. And so they had, you know, the my editor who had worked with on a number of different books, he came to me and said, Would you be interested in doing what it was called True Love? Initially, the film for a long time, it was called True Love. And
00:29:03
Speaker
So, you know, would you be interested in doing a book on that? It's written and directed to the creator of what was true love, written and directed by Gareth Edwards, who's British. He did a very low budget film called Monsters back in around 2010, where it was like literally five or six people on the crew. He comes from a visual effects background. So he's very, very adept at working with visual effects, which we can come on to in a minute.
00:29:30
Speaker
Anyway, he went from Monsters, which was, you know, a kind of little cult indie kind of hit, people were very impressed by the visual effects, which he effectively did himself. He went from that he leapt up to Godzilla, the movie from I think it was 2014 Godzilla, and which was the beginning of that whole Monsterverse saga, which is now
00:29:51
Speaker
there's been a few of those movies now. And he went from that to Rogue One, which was the Star Wars spin off, which is the one set around the kind of building of the Death Star. And he and that's until the creator that was the last film he made Rogue One. So of course, I was fascinated to see what he's up to this time around. But obviously Godzilla and Rogue One are pre existing pre existing IP basically that you know, that Star Wars, that's the Godzilla franchise.
00:30:18
Speaker
This the creator is completely original it's from his from his mind. I mean if we if we wind the clock back twenty years when he was a visual effects artist working for the bbc.
00:30:33
Speaker
I think this is how the book starts, actually. But he told me this story about one night, you know, working in his little bedsit in North London. And the TV was on in the background, and he saw this image of like a Japanese samurai and a small child. He didn't know what it was. It came on TV again a few weeks later, and he then started to sort of investigate. And it was from
00:30:59
Speaker
Lone Wolf and Cub, which is this sort of series of films. I think they're based on a kind of manga sort of comic series as well. And, you know, it's about a samurai and a child and their sort of journey through this sort of landscape. And that sort of implanted this
00:31:14
Speaker
Seed in his mind about I love to do something of a kind of you know a sort of man and a child sort of story and you've obviously seen the film you can see where that fits in and Yeah, so I started the book back in
00:31:31
Speaker
I think it was January, 2023. I got to read the script and obviously just started speaking to Gareth and as many other people as I could really about how they put this incredible film together. They battled all the way through COVID to do it. It got delayed multiple times because of COVID. I mean, as many other things did, of course. You obviously got to see the end product.
00:31:59
Speaker
super delighted to hear you enjoyed it. But the kind of making of the film is as fascinating, in a way that, you know, there's been a lot in the press recently about this, which is good that that's come out. Because, you know, he's made this incredible looking blockbuster for, I don't know, a third of the price, let's suppose, supposed to be around $80 million, right? Still a lot of money, but not not for the kind of what you see on screen. Yeah, not 280.
00:32:27
Speaker
No, quite, which is what you would normally, you know, he's incredibly humble and modest Gareth, and it almost fits his personality not to want to waste hundreds of millions of dollars making a movie when he knows how to do it. You know, at least this was his whole mandate. Let's try and do it cheaper, not just to skimp on quality, but
00:32:52
Speaker
you know he wanted to do a sort of uh i suppose you'd call it a gorilla movie you know uh
00:32:59
Speaker
in the way that his first film was done with just a handful of people, he wanted to go, initially he wanted to go into Southeast Asia and shoot all over there. In the end, mainly due to COVID restrictions, they had to sort of primarily limit it to Thailand. But, you know, to try and shoot with a skeletal crew as much as possible, to try and strip back the machinery of a big blockbuster movie, and then really shape
00:33:27
Speaker
the the movie you know all movies are shaped in the edit suite of course but this time to shape the the the visual world that you've seen on screen this kind of future set uh new asia and also you see america as well in the future to shape this world in post-production using the ilm and the many other visual effects companies that they they they work with you know and that that's how they did it i mean in some ways all films are sort of done that way but
00:33:56
Speaker
I think as he pointed out, usually you'd have all these elaborate designs and things and then everyone sort of strives to make those designs in the shoot. And then there's compromises and people are unhappy. And this time it's like, right, we've got ideas, we're going to design some images for whether it's the vehicles that you see or the buildings or all of that sci-fi, good sci-fi stuff. But
00:34:24
Speaker
but we're not gonna sort of slavishly adhere to that during the shoot. We're gonna shoot our raw footage of the actors on set with props and whatever. And then we're gonna kind of shape everything in the post-production phase. I hope that's making sense, but it's a long answer. It is. No, no, I think you're explaining what we're seeing too because a couple of things I love about what you said. One, and I wanna talk about the budget in a second because I think the performance of the film
00:34:54
Speaker
You know, I, again, I wanted to do so well that we see more of these like I feel like we have stopped seeing this type of movie, because the budget seems so restrictive probably for studios and directors right so like growing up we were talking about like aliens and predator and some of these other ones that at the time were kind of
00:35:13
Speaker
Not as visually stunning as this. I don't want to put, I mean, aliens was pretty impressive, but you know, that had these, these sci-fi elements and these futuristic elements. And that we're also going to make money ultimately for like for the studios. And so there's definitely an audience for it reminded me of those types of movies, but the, the visuals of this movie are incredible. So you're describing it. It's like for people who haven't seen the movie.
00:35:36
Speaker
you're thinking about Thailand, but then there's like some spaceship elements and you've got these AI forces coming through kind of the fields and you see the grass splitting and stuff. I mean, it is, and then the Death Star comparison that you're making, there's a kind of a bad ship, if you will, in this that's absolutely one of the best that I've seen in a movie in a long time. So there's just a lot of elements to it that are really,
00:36:03
Speaker
incredible. But I think the reason your book, I'm looking forward to your book so much is that you're not taking out your phone and taking pictures of the screen as it's happening. But there are a lot of things I was like, Oh my God, this is such an awesome visual that's happening in front of me. And I think the story is really good too. I know that some of the reviews I said, said there's some things that are derivative and you know, and
00:36:23
Speaker
other elements of sci-fi movies that you may have seen. And sure, that's fine. Not everything maybe is brand new, but the way that it's pulled together is really impressive. And then I do think that just the visual imagery is stuff that I haven't seen in a long time in a movie, where it's believable, but also futuristic at the same time.
00:36:42
Speaker
What I would really like to know is what your daughter thought of Alfie, who is the AI child that John David Washington character, his character meets. And first of all, that character is played by this sort of new chemical Madeline Univoyles. And I've been, let's say pre-worn by people who've worked on the film. Like, for example, the editor, I remember telling me
00:37:10
Speaker
Well, when we saw the footage of her, we were all just in tears because she's so good. And I kind of, you know, you sort of think, yeah, yeah, let's let's see how good she is. But I thought she was so soulful, her performance. And I'm just very curious to know what you say your daughter was 10 years old. Yeah, what she thought of Alfie.
00:37:34
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, so she really, I think she really connected to her in a lot of ways. I think that she, the film sets up this discussion about like the future of humanity, right? Like, and what is a person?
00:37:51
Speaker
I think there's these bigger questions that it's asking, obviously, about how artificial intelligence and what the future of humanity looks like.
00:38:05
Speaker
could that be some blend of artificial intelligence and human? And like I said, she spent 30 minutes at the end talking about it. And I think, yeah, to have a young child actor have to encompass, I don't know, like a lot of these questions and her dialogue, she doesn't have a ton of dialogue in the movie, to be honest. So it's a lot of reaction.
00:38:27
Speaker
And a lot of like, yeah, it's a lot of reaction, a lot of, a lot of in the eyes. Yes. To your point. And just some well-timed, uh, delivery of her lines, which obviously some could be edited, but yeah, I think she, I think she does a great job. I was trying to think as you were asking that question of, of if there was a child.
00:38:46
Speaker
actor in a role like this from something growing up. But the only movie I could think of was The Golden Child with Eddie Murphy. And I don't think that is the same type of movie. Well, it's funny you say that, though, because that film has been referenced in relation to the creator. I haven't seen that movie since it came out in what it's been a long time.
00:39:02
Speaker
So I was obviously aware of it, but I never revisited it. I guess you could say the kids from ET, you know, Henry Thomas, Drew Barrymore, they were pretty good. And yeah, that's a similar sort of relationship. That's a great call. Yes, Drew Barrymore's interaction with ET, similar, although
00:39:21
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, this movie, there's this movie is a lot of action, too, though. There's a lot of kind of violence happening around and along with this morality and this humanity discussion. So did you did you enjoy the moment? This is one of these things, of course, when I saw it finally, I knew what was coming because I read the script and written about it. Are we doing spoilers? We got to tell people, though.
00:39:45
Speaker
Well, it's the tank battle halfway through. Oh, okay. That's fine. That's okay. No, all I was going to say was I knew what was coming and you saw that rustling of the trees. And I'm like, well, I know what's coming over the hill now. And then you see these enormous tanks. And I've been, again, I'd been pre-worn by people. Yeah. These tanks are huge. And it was like, Oh my God. Because obviously they were digitally, you know, added in sort of thing. But you wouldn't even know that. I mean, obviously I'm not saying I'm
00:40:14
Speaker
You know, obviously, technology has come very far. It's clear, but that that scene is so great and the trees splitting and everything. And I mean, it's it's really memorable. I think it has one of my favorite moments in it. And again, when I read the script, I thought,
00:40:30
Speaker
oh, this could really work well. So there's just a sort of set the scene. And again, I don't think this is going into real spoiler territory, but there's obviously a big river with a big bridge over it. And you've got the sort of Americans sort of attacking these insurgent characters and they send what is called like a bomb droid. I think it's named G-13 and G-14. And then you have this kind of little,
00:40:59
Speaker
robot thing on legs that can sprint down the bridge basically towards them and obviously explode. And it is an AI creature. It is a sentient creature and is well aware that its entire life has been built up to this moment where it will sort of explode and blow people up. And I just love that as an idea that you had this sort of sentient bond droid that has been reared to this very moment.
00:41:23
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, no, that that's a great scene that whole interaction and and kind of what transpires right around that is, is tremendous is just one of the one of the highlights of many in the movie. And so I was gonna ask you, so we talked about it. So I did see that the film was about $80 million, I think all in roughly, right. And the last I checked, it was headed made 90 million worldwide. And again, so fine, it's made some money, and it's going to continue to make more. But what
00:41:54
Speaker
Why do you think that a movie that two experts like ourselves here, I'll include myself there, think it's so good.
Audience Reception and Market Challenges for 'The Creator'
00:42:03
Speaker
Why hasn't it resonated more? I'm kind of surprised. Very good question. Obviously I was pre-aware of the film because obviously of writing the book. So for me, I would hope that I would be aware of it anyway, let's say, because of a new Gareth Edwards film. Well, of course you'd be aware of it. A couple of things though. One, it was under a different title for a long time. That may have confused people. I don't know that. I've not heard that from anyone, but that could have confused people.
00:42:35
Speaker
And yeah, it was also, as I mentioned earlier, it was shot kind of under the radar on some level during COVID times. So again, maybe there wasn't a great deal of pre-awareness. I don't really know if Disney, who released it,
00:42:53
Speaker
because it wasn't this big pre-existing, you know, IP, this kind of like a Marvel movie or something, you know, that I suppose they go, well, you know, it's not like, you know, they did Indiana Jones this year, you know, that didn't do brilliantly. And that everyone knows who Indiana Jones is. So I just not sure if they knew how to sell it. I don't know. I don't know if that's true. But it's really difficult to launch
00:43:19
Speaker
an original as it's a terrible thing to say that it shouldn't be difficult to launch a great original movie. But maybe people just weren't aware of it enough. I mean, you know, you can tell me how many billboards and posters and things they were up in New York. I don't know. I mean, I don't see a load in London either. So
00:43:41
Speaker
Maybe they just thought, let's strip back on the marketing. And clearly, it's already made its production budget back. And as you say, it will continue to make money. I keep seeing these articles saying, oh, it's a flop. And it's like, well, not really. It's made its money. Yes, there's still marketing costs to cover.
00:44:03
Speaker
And as you pointed out, I think it will continue to make money. I mean, it's really difficult. I think it was lucky that June part two moved out of November so that people weren't all waiting. You know, if you're going to see one sci-fi movie this year, well, I'll wait to see June part two because of the axis strike.
00:44:20
Speaker
they move that to next year. So I'm sort of hoping it still sticks around and it has a clear run because there aren't many other, I think there's the Hunger Games prequel coming up. That'll obviously be big, I guess, but there aren't too many other blockbusters around at the moment. I mean, yeah, I just think it needed a bit more pre-awareness, but perhaps that shows you in this day and age how difficult it is to launch an original movie where, you know, it's not Harry Potter or it's not Marvel or it's not Star Wars or something.
00:44:49
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, yeah, I think you bring up some good points. And I think what's interesting to me, the other reason why I was surprised that it, that I haven't just heard more about it is because the topic is so, you know, prevalent in our society, right? Like what is artificial intelligence's role? How are we going to use this tool? What does the future look like with it? And it's like, this movie is so prescient in a way, cause it's talking about,
00:45:17
Speaker
here's how it worked its way into society. And now we're going to fast forward to when, you know, again, I don't want to give any spoilers, but to when there's been this, this incident that has caused this change between the relation between people and artificial intelligence. And so it seems like such a timely topic and it's a take on the, on the future that I had not seen before as well. So that part's really cool. I do agree that something about the strike between COVID and then the strike, you know, maybe caused a problem where they're just,
00:45:46
Speaker
wasn't the publicity or they didn't want to publicize it. I had read a take on it that maybe because of, you know, a lot of the union requests had to do with artificial intelligence, writing movies and the stuff that the topic of AI was kind of off limits. But I mean,
00:46:01
Speaker
I don't know. That seems like a little bit of a stretch. Yeah, I'd not heard that before. And I think in terms of the cast, I mean, yes, the actors weren't able to do interviews because of the strike. But really, they're not none of them. You know, they've got a wonderful cast. I mean, you've got Alison Janie and Gemma Chan.
00:46:21
Speaker
they're not that kind of Tom Cruise level of actor. So in a way, I don't think that necessarily was an issue. The AI thing is interesting. I think the funny thing is, when I read the script, and then I
00:46:37
Speaker
you know, we're starting to work on it. You suddenly realize how many other AI things were happening, not only in the headlines, but also news, you know, film wise as well. So there's a film that's just, that Amazon have got called Foe, which is Paul Mezgal and Saoirse Ronan. It's quite a sort of low key three-hander. And that's all to do with artificial intelligence as well. And I saw that quite early on in the year,
00:47:06
Speaker
quite a way before it came out. And then I was thinking, oh, this this is really, you know, there's this topic is really in the ether in filmmakers minds as well. Then there was a movie called Tim, Tim, that came out sort of, I mean, you had Megan as well, which is that kind of big horror hit.
00:47:23
Speaker
you know, suddenly it seems, you know, and filmmakers were obviously thinking about this three or four years ago, because you can't just, you can't just click your fingers and make, you know, make a movie like like you would write a newspaper article. So it's been in the ether for a long time. And it's suddenly all come together. And it's, you know, so I don't know if that helped the creator, because obviously, it came out in September. And you sort of think, well,
00:47:45
Speaker
you know, maybe if it had come out in, I don't know, January when this topic was really taking off, maybe then what, you know, were people a bit bored of the AI thing? I don't know. Yeah, no, that's a that's a good call. I think
00:47:57
Speaker
You know, again, you have a different perspective, more nuance, but for me, it's like, it's great when you can go to the cinema or read a book or anything where it's a fictional account of something that's an actual issue and it can just help shape your thoughts about what, you know, what that topic
AI Themes and World-Building in 'The Creator'
00:48:17
Speaker
is. So this, and this movie really did do that to me. It really made me think about
00:48:21
Speaker
you know, artificial intelligence and humanity and what that what that future might look at in a different way than I thought about it before I went to the movies. So I'm doing my job by sharing this interview on my podcast. I know you've you have a book coming out on the 14th, which is great. So that'll help continue the discussion. I know my daughter's actively
00:48:39
Speaker
telling her friends at school so i think between the three of us we can get a groundswell uh of support for the that's that's very good i'm very impressed by your daughter telling her friends to go and see it i do hope that they they take notice of her and do that but yeah i mean i i hope that it's a film that
00:48:56
Speaker
you know, I don't know when it will hit the streaming platforms, but I hope people will sort of discover it and rediscover it and so forth. I think it will have a really good, you know, reputation. I mean, you were talking about what grade you would give it and I was sort of, yeah, would give it around the four star mark. You know, I thought the
00:49:18
Speaker
I mean, as you've touched on them already, but the visual effects were absolutely outstanding. I mean, if that film doesn't win Best Visual Effects at the Academy Awards next year, I don't know what, well, it's gonna have to be something amazing to beat that film. And the same goes for James Klein, who was the production designer, who's a guy that has worked on Star Wars films, and he's incredibly experienced. This film's also got a lot of people that were connected to the June franchise.
00:49:46
Speaker
Greg Fraser, who was one of the two cinematographers on the film Greg Fraser, shot June and will shoot June, or has shot June 2, which is coming out. The editor as well, Joe Walker, he worked on June. So you know, you've got incredibly
00:50:01
Speaker
You've got elite level film professionals working on this film. And that's aside from Gareth Edwards, who is just a sort of, you know, I hate to use the word genius because it's massively overused in film circles and many other circles, but he really does know what he's doing. I mean, you know,
00:50:20
Speaker
The world building that he created in that film is remarkable. I could have done, I thought you mentioned the big bad Death Star-like character, or what character is the wrong word, the space station, which is called Nomad.
00:50:36
Speaker
I think that was brilliant. I felt the last act, I'm not going to go into details, could have been smoothed out a little bit, but we won't go into that too much. We could take that one offline. Yeah, for me there was so much
00:51:00
Speaker
new and fresh about it that I just, yeah. Again, when you see so many things that are based on books or whatever podcasts or TV shows or whatever, it's like, you know, just to see something that's come out of someone's brain, delivered on that scale as well. It was like, well, yeah, why wouldn't you go? Yeah, why wouldn't you go to the cinema to see it? I mean, yeah, that's why I'm rooting for it. Because I want to see more things like that. There are chances, right? Maybe it's a chance of something different. But
00:51:29
Speaker
But it strikes a chord. Yeah. Uh, in terms of your review for this one, I think you gave four out of five stars and the quote was a vividly realized snapshot of the future, which I think was, was perfectly said. So, um, yeah, I'll stick by that. I'll stick by that one. Yeah, that that's, that's great. And, and I'm telling people don't wait for streaming because even if you have a 70 inch TV, it's not going to recreate it. Oftentimes I go to the theater and I'll be like,
00:51:53
Speaker
I could have seen this one at home, or it doesn't utilize all of the theater's functionality to its top degree, like the sound and the visuals and everything. This one does. Yeah, for sure. I think the sounds, it's funny, whenever you've done, whenever I've done any of these books, um, uh,
00:52:08
Speaker
I always, well, I would I would do this anyway, but always make a point of speaking to the sound designers, because they're people I would never normally speak to in my journalistic capacity. They're never really offered up as potential interview candidates, probably because editors won't be that interested in running them unless it's a very specialist magazine, I guess. But so, you know, this is a rare chance for me to speak to these kind of guys and are
00:52:33
Speaker
I love the kind of stories they come out with of how they created some of these sounds. And you're right, the creator has incredible sound design in it. You know, we mentioned the tanks, I think we can talk about that, you know, the kind of what they did to sort of
00:52:50
Speaker
create this, you know, they don't want to just use a normal tank, you're not going to record a normal tank, they want to kind of create something ominous and, and futuristic. And so that, you know, they're obviously going to record different sounds in for real, and then blend these sounds together. And I think they went to a
00:53:08
Speaker
kind of NASA facilities, I remember, for one of the, you know, recording kind of rockets taking off, you know, things like that. And all different crazy things that they do, and then blend together into this sort of remarkable sound design. And yes, even if you've got the best telly in the universe, you it's not going to match a, you know, Dolby surround, is it in a movie theater? Yeah, it's it's immersive, for sure. So I would strongly recommend getting the theater to hopefully it sticks around the theaters for
00:53:36
Speaker
a while more. I know that we only have a few minutes left and I wanna give you an opportunity to talk about where people can read your stuff and find you as well. I wanted to ask you, I was reading through what the top sci-fi movies of the decade were and I just wanted to kind of put you on the spot. I'm gonna read them off to you and you tell me if there's any glaring omissions or anything that you,
00:54:04
Speaker
I think maybe is out of order. So for this is on IMDB, by the way. So X Machina is number one, Mad Max, the new Mad Max, Inception, Snowpiercer, Blade Runner, the new Blade Runner, Arrival, Planets of the Apes. There's two that they had in the top 10.
00:54:27
Speaker
Annihilation, which I have not seen, and Looper. So I know, again, you've watched a lot of movies, so it's gonna be tough for you maybe to go through the catalog right now. But anything that stands out to you about that list, I will tell you for myself personally, Inception, although I was completely baffled by it when I first watched it, that was a rewatchable for me just so I could go back and see, oh my gosh, this is incredible. Once I wrapped my head around it, so I would put that a little higher. I mean, it's top three already, but.
00:54:55
Speaker
That's one of my favorites of all time. Yeah, there's some great choices in there. I guess it's difficult to say when that list was produced because, for a start, we've already mentioned it a couple of times, but Where on Earth is June? That has to be in that list. But maybe that list was constructed before June came out because they had, well, they had two other Denny Villeneuve films in there apart from June Arrival and Blade Runner 2049.
00:55:20
Speaker
I'll have to see Dune by the way I haven't seen it I saw the original back in the day my father was a big sci-fi guy so he got me into Star Trek and all that stuff when I was younger so I saw the original but I've not seen the new one but you're saying strong recommend yeah yeah you have to see the new again that's one you you really should have caught on the cinema order get a chance please please do
00:55:38
Speaker
And then and then make sure you see Jean part two, you know, next next March, I think it is. Um, yeah, yeah, I think that's a pretty good list, though. I mean, there's some great choices in their loop of is very good. That's Ryan Johnson, of course, who did The Last Jedi, the one of the more recent Star Wars movies. Um, what else was on that list? Oh, Ex Machina and Annihilation of both. Um,
00:56:03
Speaker
by the same director. I mean, Ex Machina was great. I wouldn't call it an early film about AI, but in terms of this recent cycle of AI films, it was kind of right at the beginning, I guess you could say. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, that's a great film. Alex Garland, who wrote and directed that, An Annihilation, and then he
00:56:22
Speaker
many years ago wrote The Beach if you remember that novel The Beach with Leonardo DiCaprio was in. Yeah so nothing that springs to mind but June is the one that would I would say yeah you need to add that to the list. Okay I'm gonna I'm gonna watch that. I'll watch it on the small screen and apologies but then I'll see the next one on the big screen I'll make up for it so that'll help. Is there a favorite genre that you have by the way?
00:56:47
Speaker
Wow. Well, I'm so excited to go review this. Yeah, the first book I ever did, which is in about 1998, was like a sort of A to Z of the gangster movie, because I loved gangster movies. Well, I mentioned Goodfellas earlier. Obviously, you know, you had The Godfather. And so I really dove into that and went back and watched lots of black and white films, you know, The Public Enemy and
00:57:08
Speaker
Little Caesar. So I do love a good gangster film. I've only, to my shame, this was kind of, I think when that came out, this show probably had either just started or was about to start. I'd never seen The Sopranos until recently. So I finally have watched all of The Sopranos, which is obviously not a movie, although there was a movie as well. So yeah, I do love a good gangster pic.
00:57:35
Speaker
We might have to do another podcast. If it come back on, where we just do a deep dive into the gangster, uh, movie. I would be delighted. Very happy to do that. Okay. Incredible. I will say I'm one of the last holdouts on the Sopranos as well. So I don't know why I saw breaking bad. I've seen a bunch of these other kind of long running.
00:57:58
Speaker
I guess, cinematic TV shows, but for some reason, I think I saw like the first season and I know it's, I know that it's a glaring hole in my, my background. People make references. People talk about the favorite episodes. People are talking, you know, still referencing that show pretty regularly. And I'm, I'm a little bit out on it. So I just need to commit the time and sit down and knock that one out. But maybe I'll do that in advance of our gangster deep dive. Yeah. I still love, I mean, Breaking Bad and the other one, Better Call Saul, the spinoff.
00:58:25
Speaker
Yeah, they're probably two of my favorite shows of the 21st century. I mean, I just think they're both masterpieces basically. So yeah, I would have to revisit again. That's another hour. We're gonna actually we're gonna need more than just an hour probably to do those shows. We can do Breaking Bad and Betacool. So I mean, God, those shows, I just adored those shows.
00:58:48
Speaker
Okay, while I have you though, I have to ask you this question and then, but let's first say, so for the book, the creator, the book that's gonna be in stores on the 14th. So as a creator, the designs of futures passed. I know you can get it on Amazon and hopefully in bookstores for the holidays, which would be great. Where else can people follow you and your work so they can keep up with you?
00:59:14
Speaker
Good question. I am on Twitter at James Motrum. I'm on Instagram, Motrum 101. I will confess I'm not the most prolific social media human being there is. How would you have time?
00:59:30
Speaker
Well, quite exactly. But in terms of work, well, I think that review you read out of The Creator, that was the South China Morning Post, which is a newspaper in Hong Kong I write for regularly. I write for Total Film, which is a UK film magazine. The Independent, which is one of our well-known British daily newspapers, that's online now.
00:59:57
Speaker
I write in the United Arab Emirates for English language paper called the National. So yeah, you can find my work all, you know, you know, you know how to use Google, just Google, just Google. Yeah, there you go. That's what I did find that and, and went down a bunch of different rabbit holes. So that's great. Okay, so the question I was going to ask was around, what are your thoughts on like those early
01:00:22
Speaker
are kind of mid 90s movies like Swingers and Vince
Appreciation for 90s Indie Films and Final Thoughts
01:00:27
Speaker
Vaughn. Are you into any of that stuff? I was not expecting you to say that, I must say. Yeah, I mean, you know, I suppose you could say I came of age in the sense of like we were discussing at the beginning. That's when I started reviewing around that time. And yeah, I mean, I remember Swingers and Maid. Dow of Steve.
01:00:46
Speaker
I don't think I've seen that one. I mean, I love those kind of that 90s indie era, let's say. I mean, obviously, fiction was huge. You know, that is all my posters. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's just the sort of stuff we grew up on, basically. And that indie era is not
01:01:11
Speaker
I'm not saying it's not there anymore. But it's it's not as prolific as it once was obviously streaming and has changed things. The DVD market collapsing has changed things. And it's a real shame. But yeah, though, there was something, you know, which I mean, I'm not sure if this has come out in the States yet. But a film that was in Venice and has been doing the festival circuit hitman, which is the latest Richard Linklater film. It's a comedy. Okay. Len Powell.
01:01:36
Speaker
That will spirit you right back to that kind of indie era. I mean, which is one of these amazing directors that just keeps on knocking them out of the park. And you'll love Hitman. It's brilliant. I mean, the biggest round of applause I saw
01:01:49
Speaker
for any film is probably that at a press screening in Venice where of course you've got tired and jaded film journalists and they were all loving it basically so you know there are still films out there like that but it doesn't feel like there was a scene like when Favreau and Vaughan came together for Swingers and
01:02:09
Speaker
You know, look at their careers now. I mean, Favreau is all over the Star Wars universe. Right. Yeah. And he's done incredibly. He pretty much single handedly turned it into from, you know, OK, those last three movies weren't so great, but his TV shows, The Mandalorian, et cetera, he's done wonders with those.
01:02:26
Speaker
Yeah, that's incredible. Okay. I, that was just a personal one I had to ask about, but it sounds like we might have to add another one to talk about. Well, this is great. Great having an expert like yourself, someone that has this, this understanding of the, that we've seen and also the creator. I can't recommend that one enough. And I'm glad that you shared that sentiment and hopefully people listen to this and go see that movie. Uh, sounds like the hit man is another one we're going to need to see. And then as I indicated, um, I have
01:02:55
Speaker
some watching to do with Dune. So not only do we get a lot of great perspective, but we've got some new movies that we can all watch and report back. So James, I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for your time. And we'll have to get you on again to do this soon. I'd love to. Thank you, Graham, for fascinating questions. It's been really good to, you know, engage in a real meeting of the minds. Cool. Thanks, James. Appreciate it. Take care.
01:03:29
Speaker
And that'll do it for my interview with James Motrum. I want to really thank James for his time. It was a lot of fun picking his brain, and I realize we'll have to get him back on to do more movie deep dives in the interim. Hope you all have a great rest of your week, and we will see you again next time. Thank you very much, everybody.