Big Picture Podcast: Christmas Is All Around LOVE ACTUALL...

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TRANSCRIPT · AUTO-GENERATED

All right, here we go. All right. Hello and welcome to The Big Picture Podcast, where we take a look at the latest movie news, the films of yesterday and even today, and try to make some sense out of the whole mess. Seated across the microphone from me is Film Buff Online contributing editor, Natasha Bogusky.

Hi, guys. God, we're doing this. Yes, we are doing this. I'm a big cat.

Yeah, I know. And seated across the microphone from me is Film Buff Online editor and chief extraordinaire, Rich Drees. How's it going, Natasha? Oh, boy.

Okay, that's the last one, I promise. He's only been hearing it for the last half hour. Yeah. Yes, you are.

You get into that mode where you like to make those cat noises. I know you talked about how you do that at your boring day job. And they love it too. Oh, I'm sure.

I got dropped off a cat toy and catnip the other day. And I hung it up and I sat on the floor for 10 minutes at one point because I was bored out of my mind. And I just batted at it. It's the little things sometimes.

They must wonder. That was a customer who dropped that off. Anyway, how are you doing this week? How was your movie week this week?

My movie week. What the hell did I watch? The Bishop's Wife for our friends on Loud and Nerdy podcast, the India Escape Network. That was on Generation Movies on the India Escape Network.

Loud Nerdy is tonight we're recording, so I don't know what JW and those guys are. But you can find all of those episodes over on the India Network. India Escape Network. I got that part right.

Over on the India Escape Network's YouTube page where JW and I have a show. You graciously show up every now and then, which is always a joy. I scare the shit out of him when I arrive in the green room. Yes.

Apart from that, everything has been a little slow moving for me when it comes to films. We're coming to the end of the year. And yes, unlike you, who is going through all the movies to wrap up this year for the Philly Film Critics Circle. That's what I was going for.

Thank you. You're welcome. Which our wonderful editor-in-chief happens to be a member. I myself am doing what all of us do who aren't critics.

We sit down and we watch Christmas movies. I don't understand that concept. Wow. I'm kidding.

I'm kidding. I enjoy a good Christmas film, and we're going to talk about a good Christmas film in just a little bit. One thing, though, that kind of broke over the last couple of days. I only saw it mentioned this morning, and then I saw it kind of spread out over social media over the course of today.

I literally have no idea where you're going with this, but I can't wait to hear about it. Was how Stephen King was shutting down his Dollar Baby program, which... Oh, you had to go there. Yes, I did hear about that this morning.

Okay. Really quickly, if people aren't familiar, for years, Stephen King allowed student filmmakers to license the film rights to his short stories for a dollar for a year. And they could go out and make their short film based on one of his short stories. They could, you know, take these out to festivals.

They couldn't make any money. That was part of the contract. But it was just a way to encourage young artists. And Natasha here was the lead in a Stephen King Dollar Baby short film.

Yes. And you had a great ride with it. AJ, the writer-director, who is a friend of ours, and actually the son of somebody I went to high school with. And, you know, he made a great film, and everybody, you know, got some acclaim out of it, some great experience out of it.

Fantastic stories to tell. Yeah. When I saw that this morning, like when I kind of got up and was just lying in bed doom-scrolling through Twitter, I was like, ooh, that's a bummer. I didn't get noticed about it until around 11 o'clock.

Things got a little busy for me at the day job, so I wasn't able to keep up with what was going on film-wise through news. And then all of a sudden, I'm getting tagged in things on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. Sorry, X and Instagram. And all of a sudden, my phone's blowing up, and I open it up, and the group pages, Dairy Public Radio, which hosts and also brings out the Dollar Baby Film Festival, Stephen King Dollar Baby Film Festival, which has been running the last few years, were in an uproar and it broke a lot of hearts.

There are even people who are out there, there's a gentleman I know by the name of Anthony Northup, who has spent a good portion of his life cataloging and doing a compendium of most of these Dollar Baby films. He is practically our personal historian. Well, it's an interesting community that kind of sprung up out of this idea. And when Garish, which was an adaption of King's short story Kane Rose Up, which is the film you were in, started doing like the little festival rounds and stuff like that.

It was still in COVID, so I was able to watch some of that stuff online. And I was really impressed with how much support everybody gives everybody else. And I was like, wow, this is a really great little community. So I could see them being devastated.

We were lucky enough, actually, during our run of Garish to play the Dollar Baby Film Festival twice, as well as some other international festivals. So the first time we played the Dollar Baby Film Festival, we played as a usual competitor. And then they created their own block for the second year that we were there, which was returning films. So they went through and they picked what they thought was the most imaginative, the most interesting adaptations or representations of the story.

And I thought that was I was honored because when we first came in doing Kane Rose Up, which it's actually a two-part film, Garish happens to be it. So Kane Rose Up is the latter half, which we shot first. Very faithful to the story. But then we decided to look back and say, well, what if it had a backstory?

How did this person get to this point? And we wrote that and we stringed it all together. And that's how it became Garish. So there's actually a third part that has been written, which will now never see the light of day.

Unfortunately, it was a good script. I enjoyed it. Thank you. It breaks my heart a little, but at least I know.

Yes. Thank God for COVID. Three days of my life was spent writing that script nonstop. I literally could not stop.

I'm just happy that even in my own mind, I can come to peace with the fact that Kate Garish's story is now over. For those of you who have read Skeleton Key and know the story of Kane Rose Up, that would be Kurt Garish. But for our film, the director decided to gender swap it. Which was an interesting concept in and of itself.

And I thought he, AJ, did really well with it. He sold me on that, actually, when he brought it to me and said, hey, do you want to play this role? I did some research into it. And at that time, it was 2017, 2018.

In 18 years, there had only been three female school shooters out of the entire list of school shooters. And my brain went, what is the psychology behind that? Why is there such a difference in the numbers? So I thought that was interesting to play.

It was hard to play, but I did love it. I know that's kind of messed up to say, but I loved trying to figure that mystery out. No, that's a great writing and acting exercise. And then to embody that and bring that to life in the short.

I think you guys did some great work. And I feel that a lot of people are going to miss out on opportunities to really try something with these. Yeah. It's an unfortunate loss of opportunity, but at least it inspired a certain amount of filmmakers to go out and make their own stuff.

And hopefully, as many of them are going to continue their filmmaking journey. Man, you depress the hell out of me. I'm so sorry. I did not mean to do that.

Where's that whiskey? Oh, boy. Here we go. Welcome to the drunk podcast, ladies and gentlemen.

God's no. I'm kidding. Well, to kind of shift gears a little bit, some people who had been working at Pixar, who were probably very depressed about how the company's output had been treated during COVID with Soul and Turning Red just being shunted off to Disney Plus. Soul was brilliant.

Yes. Well, now they have a reason to be happy because in January, February and March, Disney is releasing Soul and Turning Red and one other film to theaters. So if you wanted to see one of those films and you saw it on Disney Plus, I was like, this is nice. But you wanted to see it on a big screen.

If you're an animation fan, you now have that option. Disney doesn't have a whole lot of other stuff coming out for this coming year. 2024 is kind of looking kind of spare because we just had two strikes that kind of delayed a lot of stuff. So I think this could be Disney looking to shore up their overall income streams.

But I'm excited because I want to go back and see Soul on a big screen. I will definitely be doing that in January. I think Turning Red is a great family outing, mother-daughter outing kind of a thing. That is a bad business Okay, so it is an anniversary.

They don't actually write that on Fandango. Oh, it says it on the Cinemark site. No, on Fandango, it just says Die Hard re-release, whereas the movie that we are going to discuss being re-released actually says 20th anniversary on it. I think like this coming week or so, it's a really interesting week at the box office because we have, opening up this coming weekend, we have the 20th anniversary of Love Actually, and that's running for several days.

We've got the 35th anniversary of Die Hard, which is running several days. We've got a foreign language film in subtitles that was in the top five this past week. Godzilla. Godzilla minus one, which was only going to run a week, and then suddenly Toho was like in the last 48 hours going, Oh, we're making money at this.

We should probably keep it in theaters for another week or two. Oh, they changed their mind? Yeah, they did change their mind. Oh, thank God.

I actually do want to catch up with it, and I knew I was not going to be able to do it by Thursday. And I know we were talking about that last night on Generation Movie as the opener, and it was mentioned that it was only in until Thursday, so thank God Toho changed their mind. Yes, I'm very excited about that. You've got...

Take the win, dude. I just said I'm excited to go see a Godzilla movie. I will go with you. I will go with you because I want to see that again on the big screen.

I kind of want to see it by myself, or I want to see it with people who haven't seen it. Okay, fine. Therefore, I'm not spoiled by you guys looking at me during certain parts like, Oh my God, I can't wait to see their reaction. And just by seeing your reaction, I know something's fucking coming.

I know, I do that a lot. You do that a lot. I do it to other people, though, so I cannot say anything. Okay.

But there's also, you know, we're starting to see some smaller things like a drama Eileen coming out this week. I want to see that. I think that's from Neon. So there's like one or two other things that we're showing, just our local Cinemark here outside of Scranton.

May December dropped this week. May December on Netflix. On Netflix. Theatrically, there's like one or two different Indian films that we got in.

Bollywood or Hollywood? I'm not sure. Honestly. Come on, man.

I thought you were my expert on the big... I am far from an expert. I am probably the most expert person out of anybody you know. That is true.

But I know one person who definitely would school you. Okay. Well, we'll talk later about that person because I'd like to meet them. Zabeida?

I haven't spoken to her in a couple of years. And it's an exciting time. There's not a lot of big releases except for Wonka and Aquaman 2, both from Warner Brothers, which is stupid to me. Why are they...

You know, they should have pushed Aquaman back a little bit. Are they doing the same week or... I think they're within a week of each other. See, it's really weird.

We're also getting, like, Maestro and Ferrari and a couple of other films dropping. But we're kind of like in this weird week or two before those bigger films start hitting. So I'm kind of excited about, wow, this is just a weird time. Like tomorrow night, Fathom Events, the 4K restoration of The Abyss.

I am so excited and I'm thinking I might actually be able to go to it now because of some other things that were pushed to next week. So I'm like, ooh, I might go to The Abyss. Well, the thing that kills me... That I haven't seen in theaters since it premiered.

Well, enjoy it. Well, the thing that kills me is that Aquaman should be the film that is Warner Brothers' big whammo at Christmas. They didn't come out at Christmas four years ago when the first one came out. And it did very well.

And I liked the first Aquaman. Honestly, I think with there being a lot of controversy behind this one, you know, in which I, uh, my speaking... I think that is a controversy that's kind of confined to TikTok and Twitter and social media. You're adorable.

And Instagram. I don't think too many people outside of that give a shit about the whole Amber Heard thing. You are fucking adorable! I absolutely.

I still have people coming into my branch fighting with other people. That's ridiculous and they need to get a life. Yes. But that being said, it's still an issue.

Whereas Wonka, the biggest issue you have is Hugh Grant is playing the Oompa Loompas? Which is kind of a little bit of an issue. I could see. I could see where some people would get upset.

But then again, are they... Is Hugh Grant taking a job away from a real Oompa Loompa? Let's not go there. Let's not go there.

Because now I feel horrible and I... Yeah, let's not go there. Oh, also... But I think Wonka's gonna do better at the box office than Aquaman is.

It just might. I mean, I think Wonka is an interesting alternative. I mean, I think both Aquaman and Wonka have the potential to be good family films. You and I spoke a while ago about how people...

Some people are getting tired of the whole Superman shtick. Or Superman? Yeah, superhero shtick. Yes, where a lot of people are gonna start pulling away because every genre has its day and this one, it seems to be finally dying out.

Wonka is definitely a more family-friendly alternative. So therefore, parents can take their kids to go see it. It still has the IP of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. But it does feel more innocent.

It's from the people who did Paddington. Yes, which is... Which is a big seller. Kind of the thing that I'm hanging my hat on about this movie.

Is that if it's gonna be good, it's gonna be because of them. Yeah. I know you're a big Timothy Chalamet fan. I love Hugh Grant and Paddington 2.

But the bits that we've seen in, like, the trailers, he doesn't quite have that air of whimsy or that kind of, like, bounce to his dialogue. But I'm okay with that. He's young. Maybe he just hasn't reached that point yet.

And that's true, too. I mean, right now, the movie is sitting on Rotten Tomatoes with a 93. Which kind of has me shocked. I honestly thought this thing was gonna clock in around 80.

I have been watching a lot of the promotion that's been happening for this. Bloomingdale's would not have done their Christmas windows in Wonka theme if they didn't think this film was going to succeed. Mm-hmm. That's true.

Yeah, that's possible. That's a huge risk to take on their Christmas windows. If you're going to show up with, I got a theme for the holiday windows of New York City's flagship, one of their flagship department stores, you better make certain that it's going to, one, bring in the marketing and the money that you need, is promoting a product that is going to succeed, therefore making certain that you succeed, and still gives the whimsy of the holiday season. Aquaman doesn't do any of that.

That's true. I think Wonka is definitely, for a while was the underdog of the holiday season, now I think it might actually be the winner. It very well, it may very well be. I mean, remember, you know, like four years ago at this time, Aquaman was cracking to make a billion dollars, which it did.

So, I mean, for this thing, probably to peter out. But that was... You said four years ago? Yes.

Thank you for... No, I'm curious. Yeah, when it came out four years ago. It seems insane that, you know, a film that was that profitable would turn around and have a sequel do like less than a quarter of that.

But it kind of feels like it might. Which is, you know, like I said, insane. But then again, that's gonna be the last superhero movie we have for about 14 or 15 months with the exception of Deadpool in the middle of summer next year. Okay, so actually, four years ago, that puts it at...

2019, wasn't it? Or was it 2018? The first Aquaman movie came out December 2018. Okay, 2018.

Avengers Endgame dropped April 2019. Okay. And that's when we started to see its demise of the genre. I don't think it's the demise of the genre.

It's slowly petering out, slowly with each film. I would... There are some uptakes. Yeah.

Such as Wakanda Forever and a few others. Yeah, I would say there's some course correction in public's interest. And yeah, like I said, though, we're going 2024 into like February of 2025 without another superhero movie, with the exception of Deadpool 3. And Deadpool 3 is gonna make a shit ton of money.

Oh, yeah. So after that, will people be interested in, you know, in superhero movies again? Because it's gonna be a while, rather than having one come out every other month. We will see.

I know that Deadpool is definitely gonna make its money as long as it keeps to the vibe that Deadpool has established. If they try to course correct into a Marvel movie from there, they're gonna lose people because he's the fucking which ran, I think, three or four series on the BBC. It was kind of a news parody kind of a show, similar to like The Daily Show, but with some sketch things thrown in there as well. Rowan Atkinson was part of that, and I think Richard Curtis wrote for that.

Don't ask me if he did or not. I've never fucking heard of this shit. Wow, not shit. And, you know, so I've kind of been on like this journey through Richard Curtis comedy, yeah, then I've been like, oh, okay, and then Blackadder comes next, and then this and that, you know, kind of putting it all together.

You're doing a roadmap of his timeline, aren't you? Yes, yes. Okay. And that's what I always like about this stuff, because I kind of picked it up piecemeal all through my life as a kid, as an adult, and every now and then you find another puzzle piece that goes, oh, okay.

And that's why, you know, oh, okay, that's why so-and-so's here, because they did this with the other. We should start doing polls on our website that goes along with The Big Picture Podcast. So if there's ever a question asked, like the one I am about to ask as well to you, we could get responses from our audience who listen. And the question is.

Can I finish my thought, though, first? I was on a roll there. I know. The question was going to be really quick, should you also, as part of your timeline, rewatch Notting Hill and Four Weddings and a Funeral?

I only watched, rewatched Four Weddings and a Funeral just recently. I haven't seen Notting Hill since it came out, so I probably have to go back and watch it. I actually recently rewatched it, so. Okay.

But as I was trying to get to, you get all this interesting web of creators, actors, writers, directors, and stuff like that. And you find surprising, interesting connections. The way you discover that all of these characters and their various individual stories in Love Actually are all related. And you find out most of that once you get to the elementary school pageant about two-thirds of the way through the movie.

I was suddenly like, oh, oh, oh, their parents, because their kids are in the, oh, okay. You know, it was a great moment. I really liked, I mean, you were starting to piece it together a little bit here and there. You know, Emma Thompson being Hugh Grant's sister, younger sister and stuff like that.

And it's like, okay, that's a nice thing. But married to Alan Rickman. And you're like, okay, well, how do these two factor into all of this? And that was like my biggest, my biggest complaint was the two movie stand-in characters.

Martin Freeman and, oh my God, I can't remember his name. I think of her as Queen Elizabeth from Day of the Doctor. But, yeah, I'm like, how do these people connect to any of this going on? And then suddenly you're like, oh, okay, because he knows that and that person knows this.

Yeah, it's like a six degrees of Kevin Bacon kind of situation in this movie, which, once you stand back and you really look at the overall thing, it's like, this is an amazing puzzle. This is an amazing piece of clockwork that Richard Curtis has put together. And every gear meshes perfectly. Everything works.

It's a perfect machine of screenwriting. And also, this film inspired so many others to come after it, such as New Year's Eve and Valentine's Day. But do they live up to Love Actually? I don't think they do.

No, no, they're all chasing that same high and they're not getting it. Yeah, I don't think they quite understand it as well. But that's because this thing is such a tricky, intricate screenplay. And, you know, like I said, this is like maybe the second or third time I've watched this thing since it came out.

And it's been a long time since I watched it. And you sat down. You know this movie inside out. You know, like all the deleted scenes and stuff.

You went on to YouTube before we started recording. And you were like, okay, you got to see this scene. You got to see this deleted, this deleted, this deleted. And as I'm watching it, it's all good stuff for the most part.

But he knew where to cut. He knew exactly what to cut because every scene, while good, it's some nice performances or funny moments. It doesn't add more in a cumulative way to the overall film. And he cut this thing right to the bone.

It's one of the leanest. I mean, it's two hours, but it's still all those extra scenes. You know, I saw on the YouTube search would have made this movie another 20 minutes longer. Love Actually, the extended edition.

Oh, boy. Thankfully, he did not succumb to any Peter Jackson-like impulses. And I say that with all love in my heart for the extended editions of Lord of the Rings. Yes.

But this should be taught in film school. Seriously. This is one of those movies where it's just like every character, every moment, every frame serves a purpose. I love you.

You just made my night, which I really fucking needed. I know that the last time you said those words were after we had the re-release of Titanic back in February. And you don't say that all that often. Apparently, I say it twice a year.

So I was getting my second one in right under the wire here. But before Titanic, I can't remember the last time that you said that on air. So, ladies and gentlemen, if you want to listen back to any of our previous... 125 episodes.

And bring me proof, please do. But that is high praise coming from you and that, thank you. You're welcome. It's just the more as I was watching it earlier, even before you got here early while I was still watching it, I was thinking, wow, this thing is just ticking right along.

Once they get to that, like I said, the elementary school pageant, it's like everything is paying off. All the connections are hitting. And the next 20 minutes is all denouement, basically, but it's all really good denouement. Yes.

I was actually very shocked. I put this up as I was hanging up garland in my hallway this year during the Christmas season. And my husband came out and he was helping me hang it up. And all of a sudden, he starts quoting the movie that's playing all the way down in the parlor.

And I looked at him. I was like, what are you doing? I do this. I quote Love Actually.

The dialogue, not him. Exactly. He goes, I may have seen it a few times before I met you. And I was like, I love you.

Aw. But it's interesting how much people react to this film. They love it. They hate it.

They can't get enough of it. They want more of it. I had my stepson who, a couple of years ago, walked into the parlor. Honest to God, he walked down the stairs, turned into the parlor, went, what are you watching?

Took one look at a frame of the film and went, oh, you're watching Love Actually. And walked out of the room. And I was like, I have trained them. At least he knew it.

He knew it by about two seconds of the film. I probably may have watched it half a dozen times since knowing them at that point. Watched a lot more since then. Yes.

But for them to be present for maybe six times. So if he was able to figure that out, I did my job well, man. That film stuck in his head. Yes.

Yes, it did. Now, you were talking a little bit with me before we started rolling about, you know, we were talking about the cut scenes and stuff. And you came up with an... You mentioned something that Richard Curtis had been toying with as an idea.

And I thought it was interesting. And as I'm thinking about it loud about it now, I think I know where he might have been inspired. But explain what Richard Curtis originally thought about Rowan Atkinson's character in the movie. Okay.

So Rowan Atkinson has a lovely double whammy in the film at one point as showing up as a jewelry clerk in... I'm guessing it was supposed to be Harrods department store selling a necklace that was supposed to end up to Alan Rickman's potential mistress. And he stalls him long enough to get him annoyed. And then his wife, played by Emma Thompson, shows up.

Later on, he shows up again. Rowan Atkinson shows up in the film again at the airport when Liam Neeson and his stepson, played by Thomas Nystor, are trying to stop Thomas Nystor's crush from getting on the plane at least long enough so that he can say goodbye to the little girl. And Rowan shows up as kind of a distraction to one of the airport security members so the kid can kind of run past. Mentioned on the Love Actually director cast commentary, which is by far one of the best I've ever heard next to the Chronicles of Narnia cast commentaries.

He mentions how Rowan Atkinson was supposed to be inspired by an angel who was supposed to show up in order to stop people from either making the wrong decision or to help them to reach their goals at Christmas. And I thought that was really interesting. I see how it doesn't fully play off because it's not set up in a proper way. It just looks like two coincidences.

Oh, there's that Rowan Atkinson guy again at the airport. There is one moment, though, where Rowan turns and looks at Natasha Richardson had passed away. For those of you who do not know, Natasha Richardson of Parent Trap and a few other fame, was the wife of Liam Neeson, who died in a skiing accident. And so afterwards watching that scene is really hard for me to imagine that this.

And she is your namesake too, correct? No, she is not. That's right. I'm sorry.

My bad. The other Natasha. Nastassia can see. Yes.

But watching that scene is really hard. There's a couple of looks on his face that my brain goes, Did he make the same faces when he actually buried his wife? And I don't like doing that and it hurts so much. Yeah, that's.

It's a beautiful scene. It's a beautiful scene. And I think what's really interesting is they take that song and it just bleeds right over into the wedding scene right next to it. And I was like, wow, that's a great choice.

Oh my God, you're right. It does work. I didn't think about it like that, but it does. And it's a great choice of, you know, the this is the photo montage that the now deceased wife put together with the music that she wanted to leave her friends with and her family with.

And, you know, it's very much an ending. And yet we look at weddings very much as a beginning or a new beginning of a couple's life. And so you see Andrew Lincoln sitting to the side, who's in love with Keira Knightley's character, who watching his best friend marry the woman he loves. He is saying goodbye to her that way.

Yes. It works on a number of levels. Again, this is some really well thought out stuff. I didn't think about that.

I've watched this movie so many times in 19 years. I never picked up on that. Dare say, there's probably a good term paper, collegiate term paper that could be written about just music choices in this movie. From taking, you know, Love is All Around and turning it into Christmas is All Around, which is a terrible idea to begin with.

You need to see the music video too. There's a full music video for this. Oh, it can't be good. Oh, it's amazingly bad.

I love it so much. And what's what kills me is I like the song Love is All Around. The original version is fantastic. Don't yell at me for this.

I have a bootleg of Talking Heads in 1976 playing at CBGBs, working out like, you know, some of their early hits like Psycho Killer and stuff like that. They drop Love is All Around in the middle of their set. And to hear David Byrne singing is like, wow, this is crazy. And to hear it here, though, and then like mutated.

And it's like, it's in the most crassly commercial way possible. This is shit, isn't it? Yep. It's all going to shit, Maestro.

I mean, yeah, he understands exactly what they're doing there. He knows exactly this is crass. This is commercialism. And then I love how the character just kind of plays into it and just goes and is absolutely flat out honest about it.

This character is played by the wonderful Bill Nighy. And he just has a kind of like an entire, I have no fucks to give. I have no fucks to give because I have nothing to lose. And it's a delightful through line through this whole movie where it's just like, here he comes to do something wacky now.

And I love it to pieces. I have talked to friends of mine who have watched this movie and said, I would have bought that fucking record just because he literally gives no fucks about anything. Oh, same here. I most likely would have gone.

If I had seen him on like, I mean, well, he, they have him on like Ant and Dec, which were two, which he says Ant or Dec. And that pisses me off. I think he's just being like, I don't know who either of you are. So that's actually not written that way.

He delivered it that way. And so the look you get between Ant and Dec is one of those. Did he just say that? Yeah.

Well, it makes the scene work. It does. But, you know, so they're actual presenters of a chat show. I don't know if they're still together doing a show or not, but you know, if he had shown up on like Letterman and I mean, good God.

Letterman would have had him on the second he started doing something like that because Letterman was all about busting the ridiculousness of commercialism and stuff like that. If you watch his show, it was always about like subverting talk show premises and tropes. So, yeah, I could see Letterman saying, get that guy on our show now because he will say some amazing stuff and I don't care. There are so many amazing lines that came out of this movie and a lot of them came from Bill Nighy's character.

One of them famously is, hello, boys and girls. Here's an important message from your Uncle Bill. Don't buy drugs. Become a pop star and they give you them for free.

Yeah, it's a delightful performance. It really is. And it's interesting. He did this and Underworld in the same year and both of these movies together shot him into fame.

Love that. Who's your favorite couple? Actually, make it two. Let's make it two.

Oh, geez. Well, it's really hard to pick just one. There's just so many good ones. I do like the Prime Minister's story because goddamn, Hugh Grant is just charming and awkward.

He's got so much shame. His belly button ring comes in. He just managed to, you know, navigate British politics to become a prime minister. He can't navigate his own relationships.

No. And, you know, like the second, you know, the girl walks out of the room and he's like, you know, just bouncing his skull off the table off his desk because he's like, oh, God, I'm an idiot. Do you have this problem? To a portrait of Margaret Thatcher.

Of course, she did. You saucy minx. Actually, I think even Margaret Thatcher has children and I dare say she never had sex. She's cold and frosty.

I'm sorry. Damn. Well, she is known as the Iron Lady for a reason. I grew up in the 80s and, you know, we had Reaganism and she was pretty much the British version of Reaganism.

And so, therefore, yeah, it was not good. All right. Apart from the prime minister. Let's see.

I kind of related a little bit to the Martin Freeman thing as the stand in. I've worked as a stand in, but not a naked stand in. I love his seven years in Tibet line. It's a Brad Pitt.

I think it's funny how true to life it is about filmmaking that when you see something in a movie that looks really sexy and hot, it's the byproduct of a lot of boring, you know, boring technical stuff that takes forever to achieve and accomplish. I was watching the cutaway sequences during the Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas is You, which feature Hugh Grant's prime minister and his catering manager played by Martine McClutchin, Natalie, as they're standing backstage trying to hide the fact that they want to kiss each other so bad. And I'm watching it and watching it going, how long did they have to hold the intensity of we're getting closer and closer and closer? And back to one, we start away closer and closer and closer.

Back to one, closer and closer and closer. Oh, my God. Can we just fucking make out already? But like things like that, just, you're right.

The most beautiful, hot, steamy scenes that you could ever imagine are technical nightmares and oftentimes not as hot as you think they are. Trust me, I've been in them. Yes. But I mean, it's hard to pick like favorites out of these, though.

I think they all work really well. I like the I'm blanking on the character name, but, you know, the dad and the son, which is something you brought up. Yeah. Liam Neeson and Tommy Singster.

Yeah. As as something that we don't see a lot of good positive father son relationships in movies. Not anymore. The best one prior to this.

And I had mentioned this earlier, was Sleepless in Seattle. Tom Hanks and his son then. Funny enough, both films, the wife had been previously widowed, which creates, I think, this bond between the father and the son, not only of grief, but of hope. And also this idea that the child can also be an adult, reinforcing the adult to embrace their inner child.

And yeah, I don't think we see that all that much anymore. I do like the Laura Linney story as well. I think because it doesn't have a happy ending, which I think says something about me, maybe. No, no, that's actually one of my favorites as well.

I think it's very true to life that sometimes things, as much as you want them to work out, the timing just isn't right. Yeah. And it doesn't. Doesn't.

And you can obviously see that for Carl, her her paramore, her unrequited paramore, even when he is interested and things go awry, it hurts on his end as well. Yeah, because maybe what we're seeing is only one half of the story. What if you flipped the mirror to the other side? What if Carl was unrequited about Laura?

Which they kind of intimated anyway with the boss being like, well, sit down because I got to tell you, I know you have the hot vibes. You have the hot vibes for this guy. He has the hot vibes for you. So, A.

If people just know him from mr. Bean and that's it search out everything else he's ever done because he he he's gonna be absolutely unctuous when he needs to be and here he is just like just dancing up to the line of that and then going oh you know there's there's a there's a couple of lines I'm thinking of especially in Blackadder the third series where Blackadder is talking with Samuel Johnson about the first dictionary and Blackadder is totally unimpressed with Johnson played by Robbie Coltrane by the way and he's just sitting there. He's just like making up these words and Johnson's like what? And he starts like scribbling these these new words down and it's just hilarious.

Oh, I'm so spasmotic to have caused you such peridiscombobulations. And you know Johnson's scribbling like a mad man and he has a very similar vibe from that here where he's just like and he just like when he just pulls up the scoop and then he scoops in the candy and drops that. Okay, he's done with the scoop. Nope.

He's got the paper, the twisty paper stuff, the next stuff into it. And it just keeps going and going and going. And you know Johnson's scribbling like a mad man and he has a very similar vibe from that here where he's just like and he just like when he just pulls up the scoop and then he scoops in the candy and drops that. Okay, he's done with the scoop.

Nope. He's got the paper, the twisty paper stuff, the next stuff into it. And it just keeps going and going and going. And you know Johnson's scribbling like a mad man and he has a very similar vibe from that here where he's just like and he just like when he just pulls up the scoop and then he scoops in the candy and drops that.

Okay, he's done with the scoop. Nope. He's got the paper, the twisty paper stuff, the next stuff into it. And it just keeps going and going and going.

And you know Johnson's scribbling like a mad man and he has a very similar vibe from that here where he's just like and he just like when he just pulls up the scoop and then he scoops in the candy and drops that. Okay, he's done with the scoop. Nope. He's got the paper, the twisty paper stuff, the next stuff into it.

And it just keeps going and going and going. And you know Johnson's scribbling like a mad man and he has a very similar vibe from that here where he's just like and he just like when he just pulls up the scoop and then he scoops in the candy and drops that. Okay, he's done with the scoop. Nope.