Today's episode of The Big Picture is brought to you by NHTSA. If you think drunk driving is no big deal, you couldn't be more wrong. You could get in a crash, people could get hurt or killed, and you could get arrested and curcute legal expenses, or even lose your job. So next time you plan on drinking, make sure you plan ahead.
Designate a sober driver, or use a ride service to get home safely. Drive sober, or get pulled over. I'm Sean Fennissi. And I'm Amanda Dommen.
And this is The Big Picture, a conversation about where Bernadette went. Where'd she go, Amanda? That's a great question. There are many answers to that.
There are. We're going to get into those questions and answers. Well, maybe some of the answers, not all the answers necessarily. I think the answer is very obvious.
That's the problem. We'll get there. Good point. Later in the show, I'll have a conversation with the filmmaking trio, Radio Silence.
They have a new action thriller, horror, comedy called Red You're Not. It is a really, really fun film coming from Fox Search Lake this week. So stay tuned for that. But first, Amanda's back from vacation.
Amanda, how was Hawaii? Hawaii is a great state. Yeah, you enjoyed it? Lovely time.
We were on the island of Kauai, which is always beautiful. I recommend it. Thank you to everyone in Kauai, including Pierce Brosnan, who was there. Wow.
We didn't see him, but he lives on Kauai. And we were definitely using his Instagram to go to various beaches. And there was a new market that opened that we checked out. UIG stocked Pierce Brosnan?
Yeah, pretty much. You know who actually did was my husband because he was like, I'd like to go to this market where because Pierce Brosnan and Jason Momoa were hanging out together on the island, like on the North Shore where we were. And then my husband was like, we got to go see what this is about. You think those two guys are friends?
We were trying to figure this out, actually. Have they been in a movie together? Or is it just kind of famous people on the North Shore of Hawaii kind of come together? They had played golf, which I think also sparked my husband's interest.
They had both played golf, but we don't know if they had played together? No, they played golf together. And then they were having drinks afterwards. This is fascinating.
At PV Market on the North Shore, which is new. You know what this means? This means Lisa Bonet was also in Hawaii, which is just fantastic. That sure didn't see her.
No. What a shame. Hey, Hal, we're here to talk about movies and movie stars. This weekend was an interesting weekend at the box, up to some end.
Here's why. A movie that was not a sequel and not a superhero movie was number one. And it was not blinded by the light, the Bruce Springsteen Ode from Grinder Chata, who we spoke to last week. And it was not the aforementioned Where to Go Burn a Dead, Richard Link Later's new movie.
It was a movie called Good Boys, which I'm almost 1000% certain you have not seen. I haven't seen it in part because you waved me off it. I saw this movie itself by Southwest. And it was bad.
I just didn't think it was great. And on the other hand, when I saw our boss Bill Simmons sharing his son Ben's takes on the movie, I realized that, of course, there is a huge market for a movie like Good Boys in that market. It's 13 year old boys, which is the audience of many movies. In fact, the most successful movies in the world are seen by 13 year old boys.
So I shouldn't be surprised by this weekend's outcome. I assume you weren't either. No, I think it was very clearly not for me, which is fine. We movies are for different people.
It's one of the joys of living in this current age, that there's something for everyone. It was very clearly not my interest. And it's also not surprising that the thing for 13 year old boys made money. That's the world we live in.
And this is just kind of like a very clarified version of that. Yeah. And it seemed like a particular underline beneath the struggles of Booksmart, which is theoretically shooting at the same audience, but didn't quite have the same level of success. Now, there may be some reasons for that.
Maybe some marketing differences between, say, the Soul Booksmart versus how they sold Good Boys. There may have been some gender differences. I haven't seen the demographic breakdowns of these two movies, but whereas Good Boys is basically super bad, but pre-high school, Booksmart was super bad, but female. And I think that that that's at least notable.
Yes. I read one break box on this breakdown that said it was over 50% men who went to see this movie, which is not surprising. Seems plausible. I don't want to, I think the numbers speak for themselves.
I would not underplay the gender difference in this. And I think I love Ben Simmons. I'm glad he had a great time at the movies. And that's kind of where I am with it.
I feel similarly blinded by the light struggle to find an audience. I think there's probably a number of reasons for that. It's possible that there's a little bit of a classic rock fatigue thing happening in the afterglow queen. You know, Rocket Man did well, but not great.
This movie did not do well here. It actually didn't do that great in England either, which is notable because it's an English production. It's English filmmakers, English actors. And, you know, Bruce obviously does not appear in the movie, nor does the person who looks like Bruce appear in the movie.
But the struggles of a movie like that too are kind of notable, even though that movie does, I don't know if it has necessarily classical comparisons. But where'd you go burn a debt is where we're going to focus our energy from most of this conversation. And I did read that this is the lowest wide release of Richard Linklater's career. Richard Linklater, of course, the director of things and confused and slacker and the before trilogy and a myriad of other incredible films.
Honestly, he's really one of my favorite filmmakers. And I come to this movie not having read the novel by Marie Assemble. I come to it blind, other than knowing that it was supposed to come out a year ago. And then it was supposed to come out in the spring.
And then it ultimately came out in August, which historically is never a good sign for a movie. It comes to us now and I'm going to say right at the top, I liked it. I enjoyed it as well. I think I both understand the aura of problem or disaster movie that was surrounding it.
I think there are parts of it that really work and parts of it that really don't work. You can see that you can see the struggle of adapting on the screen in real time. And we should talk a little bit about the text. It's a particularly difficult book to adapt because it's made of it's not written in a linear narrative way.
It's emails and faxes and diary entries. And it's basically an epistolary novel, but from several different people simultaneously and in chunks and in several different formats. So you can see all of that happening. I thought it was really interesting.
I spent a lot of time thinking that it was made with a lot of care and that if they made all such movies, I thought a lot about Netflix movies during this that don't seem to be made with a level of craft and thought and time that's put into this. You could see that people were really trying hard to make this work. And maybe it didn't totally come together, but I felt the effort. So help me understand having read the book.
If you think that the things that did not work about the film and it's a mixed bag. It was definitely more positive than negative to me. I can see that there are some sort of narrative strands that don't work there's some tonal things everyone's like watching it like what kind of movies is this trying to be. Can't quite put your finger on it.
But from the book perspective, is it just because adapting an epistolary novel is so difficult in this narrative format or is it because they made some significant changes to the text that then kind of shunted the story because that's what I've sort of absorbed. That there have been some they made some choices against the cortex that then heard the movie. They did make some major choices. Specifically, I'd forgotten there was a whole subplot in the book about the LG character who was played by Billy Crudup in the movie having an affair with the admin.
Sue Lynn. Sue Lynn who is also in the movie but has a much reduced character and she's a lot more present in the book. And that becomes an aspect of it. I had completely erased that from my memory of the book.
So I didn't experience it as a major loss. The big difference to me is that the book is a satire and it gets to the emotional place that this movie does as well. But it's coming at it from essentially the opposite perspective. I thought I was surprised that Richard Linklater decided to make a movie about artists and creativity and finding yourself through it because that's certainly a theme in the book.
But at no point does anyone say I'm an artist and I need to create which is the worst dialogue ever said. Anytime anyone has to proclaim themselves an artist, you're not an artist in my opinion. But it's clear that's what he related to and developed in the movie. The novel is much more about a family.
Interesting. So yeah, let's talk just very plainly about what the movie is about. It's about a woman in Verde de Fox played by K-Blanchett who is an architect who has not really worked in 20 years. And she has moved to Seattle with her husband who works for Microsoft.
He is a sort of TED talk giving tech whiz. They have a young daughter named B who is on the precipice of going to Chote, the boarding school. And Bernadette hasn't worked for a long time because she finds herself in what we can't quite tell is either sort of a personal crisis or just a she's just decides her seat from society a little bit. Has she developed a gourphobia that she had mental illness?
Is it more of just a kind of block around what she can do because of the disappointments of previous projects that she's worked on? And so it is a portrait of a family mostly Bernadette. And I guess the thing that has been explained to me is that Bernadette kind of vanishes for a long stretch of the book. And she doesn't really vanish for much of this film.
Yes and no. I think that's it. I know that that's been the talking point and it's a bit of a simplification. She does go missing at the beginning of the book and technically in the movie she does as well because it starts with like the Antarctica snow caps.
It's like I think my mom went away because XYZ and the book is framed similarly. It is primarily told as an aeration from the perspective of B and beating like here's what happened and here's how my mom went missing and then as much as there was a lot of narration and there are also chunks of the emails from Bernadette say to mandula, the virtual assistant who becomes an identity theft. And it was interesting I went and reread some of the book last night after seeing the movie and they do take some of those emails for Batum and put them in the movie. When she's dictating that's written for Batum.
But those emails are in the book from the very beginning so you are in her head throughout and then there are people writing about her contemporaneously. So she's missing but it's not like she's not a character. She's really present throughout the book. Obviously as soon as you turn that into movie you have to totally.
That's one of those things that's really impossible to do in a movie in the same way. So they just make the choice to linear like narratapize it and it's different. But I think that it's more because of perspectives than because of the fact that she's missing. I didn't think it had a major pacing problem.
It's about a hundred minute movie. It's ultimately a character study. It's a little bit of a fan of service mostly about this very idiosyncratic, brilliant person. And the themes are not very difficult to surmise.
You already mentioned that the life of a creative person is what Link Leader has really brought to this story. You haven't just rolled your eyes at me. I think I thought that the collision of creativity and mental health as a conceit is interesting. I think it's a little bit of a difficult conceit to resolve in a 100 minute zippy character study.
But that was a case where I was like maybe this should have been a six part mini series that would have been able to more clearly unpack some of the bigger ideas that this is going for. Even if that isn't necessarily what Maria Simple was driving at. It's okay. I mean filmmakers are obviously identify something in work and then they extrapolate upon it.
So I at least like the idea of approaching those concepts. Yes. I just think that you could feel that it was projected on and then not fully developed within the text. And I think the other thing that is a little underdeveloped in the movie and just because of time is the connection between the mother and the daughter and what it means to be a mother, which is a major theme in the book.
And there is a lot more of the anxiety of the other parents and what it means to fit into like a society or community of parents, etc. And again, the satire really plays into that. And a lot more of anxiety about kind of how her did that his SHB and vice versa and how the dad has shaped her. And it seems like that.
That kind of pops up at the end of the movie, but again, they don't have a ton of time to explore it. And I do think it's all interesting. I think that one of the ways that the book really succeeds is that it is easy to make fun of helicopter parents and all of the moms and the Kristen Wade character who is just as annoying in the book. But you don't often explore the other side of it.
And this was written in 2012, which was kind of before the trend of mommy lit for lack of a better word. And that sounds really pejorative. But I mean, there has been a recent outcrop of books and movies about being a mom is hard and how do you lose yourself? And this came before that and did it pretty smartly, I thought, and without ever being too trically.
And this gets a little trically, the movie. Yeah, inevitably, what you have to do is take something that happens over and over again in a book because you have this extended period to identify it. And you just have to have one big noisy scene that represents all of those other feelings. So there is this showdown sequence, she can keep a bunch of characters and wigs character and then be gets involved.
And it's like a little bit of an acting showcase. There's a little bit of the like no tears fall in eyes, welling moments. There's a big speech from a 13 year old girl, but it's not subtle. And inevitably, when you're reading a book, it starts to accumulate.
And this is just kind of like, this is how we feel about this. And then they go to the next scene. Right. The other thing is that when you're writing it, the book allows for the assides and the jokes that kind of undercut the sentimentality of it.
And they use those assides in certain parts of the movie, but you can't really do it when you have to have the big thesis statement scene of like, this is what it means to be a mom or this is what it means to be an artist or like I lost your mom. And so I think it's a tonal imbalance. So the reason the movie really works for me is because it's a movie with Cable and She Underly Creda. And obviously in particular, she is just amazing.
It's incredible. And I think we might be taking her for granted a little bit. And it's funny when you see somebody like this in an uneven movie and you're like, oh, it doesn't matter. She just carries it.
Like I don't want to stop watching even if there are things about it. I don't think her great. And it's pretty, she's pretty incredible. I was astonished by it.
I was also uncomfortable at least for the first third because I was just like, it is really uncomfortable to watch myself on screen right now. I've like related to a lot of the not wanting to talk to people when she's like the problem with the cruise ship is that there's 147 other people that I have to talk to and then the dinner table strategizing. I was like, I've done this in real life. But it's a magnetic performance.
It's one of those things where you watch around, you're just like, Oh, okay. So this is what presence is and this is what being a movie star, but also a great actor really is. Yeah. I mean, I'm just gonna think about her career the last few years has been a little bit strange.
These are her last in-person performances because she boasts two characters in the Mowgli Legend of the Jungle and how to train your drag in the hidden world. You know what? You got to fund those Australian theater companies somehow. She's been paying some bills lately because here's some of the other films she was in the House of the Clock in its Wall last year, which was a kind of a goofy Eli Roth kids horror movie that no one saw.
Ocean's eight, which I thought was kind of an interesting performance from her, but it's not a good film. It's a misuse of her. That's one of the great problems of that movie is that they don't know what to do with Sandra Bullock and Cable and Chad. Should they flip roles?
Yeah. That would have been the solution. Thor Rachnerock came before that. She's so good in that.
The Mortal Roll is hella. She's really hamming it up in that movie. That's obviously a paycheck. She's in song to song and voyage of time, which are two Terence Malek films.
She's the narrator of Voyage of Time. Have you seen that film? I have not. We had a little chat about Terence Malek while you were on vacation.
I don't know if we necessarily need to loop you back in on that one. I haven't got up yet. I don't know whether I will. Carol is probably the last truly great performance we've gotten from her.
I don't think that this is necessarily going to be an Oscar-nominated film because there seems to be a lot of weird energy around the movie. I was thinking a lot about the wife while watching this movie. Wow. The wife?
The film we both see? Yes. The film, the wife. Well, an August release, a tremendous leading actress performance and a movie that a lot of old people have seen.
I would say that my Sunday afternoon screening after vacation was I was one of the younger people in the audience, which is not something I can say usually anymore. Did she win for Blue Jasmine? She's a two-time winner. She won for Blue Jasmine and for the Aviator.
I could just see it being in the mix. Speaking to her point of, do we appreciate her enough? Are we using K-Blanche enough? It's a pretty gauntlet throwing performance.
This is a seven-time nominee. K-Blanchett or K-1-slip? Oh, Blanchett. Really?
Oh, that's interesting. I don't know if I would have guessed that. I like them both. Obviously, and Kate Winslet has been in one of my favorite movies, and in many movies that I really enjoy, but I...
Oh, Peter, is that what you were talking about? That's not even joke about that. There's the hard edge to Blanchett that I obviously relate to and inspired by. Can I tell you one thing I really liked about this movie?
It's obviously about an architect, and they do a great job of showing architecture, of showing blueprints, of showing how buildings come to life. I heard recently that there are some complicated descriptions in the book of choices that the character makes that it would be impossible to create, and Link later actually puts the sort of bifocal, artisanal, artistic creation in the film. He actually goes out and builds some of the things that are describing the book, which I thought was kind of great. It looks really beautiful, at least until the anarchist stuff, which is very clear that they're not an anarchist, but that's okay.
No, they're in Minnesota there. Yeah, that's fine. But they really... That's when I was saying you could tell that they spend time on it.
The sets are beautiful. The decrepit house they live in, but suddenly certain rooms are beautifully designed, and great furniture. She dresses immaculately. They have really put a lot of thought into what this world would look like and what she would be like, which I appreciated.
I assume in the book they're a little more on the nose about the house being a metaphor for Bernadette and her brain and her creativity and everything. They're not more on the nose about it. The movie is far more on the nose than the book, because the book just allows for weird diversions. There's a lot more time spent making fun of Microsoft, and another way that you can tell this book is written in 2012, because if it were released now, that would definitely be about Amazon, but that's okay.
That's a good point. There's a Jeff Bezos joke in here. The one thing that stuck out to me that is, how do I put this? Truly insane.
It's the thing that Billy Crudgott's character develops called the Samantha 2, which appears to be a decal that you place upon your skull and then reads your mind and allows you to write emails. Now, there's been a lot of talk about the paranoia of big tech companies in this country over the last couple of years for obvious reasons. Our democracy has been utterly threatened. Nothing could threaten civilization more than a decal that can read my mind.
We don't need that. The world does not need that. In the book, again, when it's satire, he's working on something that's like it's ridiculous and it's supposed to be a send-out by Silicon Valley. It is in context.
It's also a thing about nine years ago in terms of technology. That didn't feel as close. It still felt a little sci-fi and still a little frivolous. And they're like, things we don't need.
I agree that it's also just Billy Crudgott is so charming in this movie. It's like he's so charming. He's got one of those faces where every turn is an angle. You know, he's really cut.
Can you work out your face? Is there a way to flex your face? There are many actors who would really benefit from that, but I especially- There are many podcasters who would benefit from that. No, I don't think so.
But he just is also so- There's a little warmth in this, which I actually don't normally expect from him because he's so great at playing that really snaky handsome villain. I think he's really charming and probably- It's not a problem because I liked watching him, but another imbalanced in this movie is that he is too likable because what he is doing doesn't make a ton of sense. Yeah, he's a little underutilized in general. He was originally, I think, meant to be more a leading man.
He never quite got off the ground as a leading man. He slid into that oily villain role or sometimes just an untrustworthy type. He plays a lot of lawyers. He's a lawyer in the spotlight.
That's his performance. He's also just really good at being despicable and handsome, which speaks to me. Reminding a lot of 20-century women. It's like if the guy from 20-century women grew up and invented something for Microsoft, and that's a good, that's a good lean for him, a good vibe for him.
Let's talk about Link Leader. Okay. Can I just say one more thing that I- there's one thing I really liked about this movie. Yeah, please.
I really enjoyed the documentary within the movie, which was both like a formal nod to the movie itself, but to the book itself, but also really worked. Very well done. Yeah. And I was just like, oh, okay.
They really tried. I like that. I like when you can just see that someone is working through a bunch of ideas and maybe not everything works, but it's okay. That's what I was going to say though about Link Leader, which is that he's got a lot of ups and downs, but this guy is a fucking master.
Like he is, you can see he's got way more moves than your work a day, mid-budget movie director. He's just way more interested in a lot of different kinds of things, whether that's making a mini documentary inside of his movie featuring Megan Malali and Steve Zahn and Lawrence Fisher, or actually executing against the architectural plans inside of a novel, or creating sculpture inside with him with glasses, like his mind and the people that he works closely with over what is now 30 years in the movie business are interested in trying stuff. And even though the entire movie business around the kind of films that he makes us falling apart around him, he's still going for it and he's still looking for people that are and help him out. I think one of the anxieties that has surrounded the movie is that Annapurna funded the movie.
Annapurna has been going through this year-long trauma of questioning whether or not it should be a company and whether Megan Allison will burn through all the cash and does she not know what is a movie that makes money, yada yada. We talk about that kind of stuff on the show all the time, but I don't care. Just make good movies. Ultimately, that's the thing I'm most interested in.
And I appreciate an effort at adapting a great novel with a great filmmaker with a great actress and trying to make something doesn't totally work, but it's the most valiant effort I think I've seen this year. I would agree with that. It's just a lot of different things to hang on to and discuss, which is another thing that we don't get a lot of. It just gets a very rich text of a movie, which brings me to the thing that I want to talk about that I didn't like.
We can't craft Casque or some way can drama anymore or dramaties. It's just not working for me. It's distracting every single time. And I know that it's supposed to serve to play into the satire role, but she's kind of a satire of a satire at this point.
Ever since The Martian, it's a no for me. What should she be doing? Comedy? Things where she can be funny?
Because this, even though it is supposed to be comic relief in a way, the other problem is that she's just mismatched with Caitlyn and the Bernadette role. They have different energies. Yeah. And it's just not even a fight.
The scene when they come together is really like, this doesn't work. You know, and they finally agree to make jokes at each other. That stuff doesn't work. You know, she's had a weird career.
She's obviously really talented. I would put her in the kind of all-time Saturday Night Live. She might be a Mount Rushmore Saturday Night Live person. Absolutely.
And so we can never take that away from her, but she's having kind of a funky film career. I just think also there's an association to her being in a movie at this point that it's hard to look past. She can't just be a character. She's being Chris and Week as a character.
And that is tough when you're, especially when you're trying to do this delicate balance of tones in a movie like where to go burn it at. So one of the challenges for you as a movie fan is that her next big part is of course as the supervillain in Wonder Woman 1984. I'm very concerned. She plays Barbara and Minerva.
I also just don't like 80s stuff. I don't need movies set in the 80s. I'm good. I lived through it sort of.
Wow. So I'm sweeping claim. Well, I've had enough. You know, it's like how many seasons of Stranger Things that we had at this point.
I know that's a TV show, it's whatever. It's I just, it's not the reference point that I'm interested in. So I am very concerned about Wonder Woman 1984. Even though I loved Wonder Woman, I love Gaga, though I love Chris Pine, who's somehow still alive in this movie that's set 40 years after he died in the first one, whatever.
I know that you are officially back from vacation because you are patty dismissing things right out of hand. Not even really giving it very much thought. I don't know where Richard Linklater goes from here. He's now made a few movies in a row that nobody saw after Boyhood.
He saw everybody, he made everybody want some, which is just goddamn amazing. And if you haven't seen everybody want some, you have to go watch that movie right now. You really should also just a great late summer movie. Everybody once I'm, I'm sure I've told this before was a movie that I didn't see because you and Chris Ryan went to see it and were like, real boy movie, but I loved it.
Which is sometimes how I can feel about Linklater films. True. You literally made a movie called Boyhood. Yes.
And my husband said the same thing. And then I watched it. And I was just like, this is just a group of charismatic young men in baseball pants. Little Gaga.
Yes. It's also how Glenn Howell came to us. That's very true. Always remember that Richard Linklater discovered Glenn Powell.
Always with an eye for talent, the actress who plays B in this movie, same thing. It's like, who is that person? Emma Nelson? I've never seen her before.
I think this is her first film. Is that introducing? I mean, yeah, she's wonderful. He really has that.
And he made Last Flight Flying a couple years ago and he was on the show talking about it. One, he's obviously just like such a thoughtful, interesting dude. Two, that also was an adaptation of a novel. It was the sequel to The Last Detail.
Changed a couple things, not everything. It's kind of hard to capture the essence of a story like that. Used movie stars. It kind of, it was similarly uneven.
And it was similarly bought by a company that hasn't been releasing movies for the last 100 years. That was an Amazon release. He's looking to wherever he can to get sort of the Medici work of big companies that don't realize that it's hard to sell Richard Linklater movies. You know, in School of Rock is really his only true blue hit.
He's just made 10 plus films that people love. They're confused, bombed. The before movies don't have a big audience, even though they're small-scale movies. They're all like DVD movies.
And so it's interesting. Well, once one time that was lucrative. It was, it was. But for the most part, even when he's tried to work quote on quote commercial, I guess Bad News Bears did pretty well too.
But that was a remake. But just having an interesting career. Like, I hope he gets to make 25 more movies. I'm sure he'll find a way to do so with a small amount of money, but I hope he gets more money.
I think in terms of the Medici strategy, it seems like a very smart strategy for Mr. Linklater, which again, you have to admire someone who has figured out the system and figured out, I don't even want to say game it, but how best to fit in it and find people who are willing to make his particular type of movie. It because it doesn't make sense for him to do studio stuff. And this movie isn't going to make a ton of money.
Do you think people will watch this at home? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And that might actually be the right atmosphere for it.
I don't think that you lose anything. And so finding his way into that market. But here's the thing. And you've made this point so many times on this show.
This is a classic movie where if I watch it at home, I'd be looking at my phone. Because there are some parts that are uneven. There are some parts where I'm like, are you losing a little bit? Is this totally not quite where I want it to be?
And that is usually when I'm like, what's on Twitter? What's going on in Slack right now? And I like the idea of seeing movies like this, even movies that aren't perfect, that aren't great in theaters and letting them envelop me a little bit more. It's also uncomfortable at times, which again, might have just been a man of feeling too close to certain aspects of it.
But I was thinking a lot about it. I want to say it by myself. And this is a particular tone that my husband can't say. I don't think finished a big little eyes season one because he was just like, this is too uncomfortable.
And there is something about the passive aggressiveness and the someone just losing it in real time that is hard to watch. And if you were at home, you can just like, well, I'm done. I've seen enough of this. I don't need to be in this vibe anymore.
And if you're in the movie theater, you're just on the journey. I mean, I've got some breaking news in front of me. Okay. Annapurna update.
This is on deadline.com. Megan Ellison's company, nearly out of the woods, quote unquote, last and final offer made to banks. Here's the story. Looks like Hollywood's biggest lenders are about to call off the dogs on Annapurna.
Megan Ellison's taste maker production distribution company sources said that Ellison's father, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, has submitted a quote last and final offer to pay Annapurna's key lenders offering between 80 cents and 85 cents on the dollar. This is for debt sources placed at north of $200 million that the company defaulted on through $350 million credit facility secured in fall 2017. Annapurna, I guess is saved by Larry Ellison. And thus, we will get where to go burn it at two seeking burn it at.
I mean, this is amazing timing. There's no coincidence that this announcement is being made the Monday after this particular release and the press coverage of this particular movie. Yes. Stay tuned to this podcast as we talk more about hopefully Annapurna's ability to make more movies.
A couple of things that I wanted to talk to you about before we wrap up. One, I think it's important that in our ode to people who have passed that you don't necessarily care about, but hopefully do. I mean, it's Peter Fonda. I'm not a respected Peter Fonda.
Peter Fonda, of course, one of the most important people in the history of American movies that you may be overstating things by saying that because frankly, he was not in a lot of movies that people loved, though he was in and wrote Easy Rider, which changed movie culture forever, movie that just celebrated its 50th anniversary. Obviously, the story of two motorcycle riding drug dealers who traversed the land in search of cocaine and money. It's amazing that a movie with that logline changed American culture, but it really did. He was Oscar Nomine for that script.
He also was Oscar Nomine for his performance in 1997, Uly's Gold. He had an interesting movie career as an actor. He was, of course, Henry Fonda's son, Jane Fonda's brother, and the father of Bridget Fonda, but he was mostly in car chase movies and motorcycle movies and Westerns. He made an effort towards a indie masculinity that is kind of gone now.
It's interesting to think of him. I think most people are aged, think of him as the Uly's Gold guy that showed up at the Oscars in 1998 and really was hoping he was going to get that late career nod. He didn't win. He also had some quite aggressive political opinions in the last couple of years.
I think that colored some of the way that people saw him, but just an extraordinarily important guy. I don't think movies in America would be what they are now without him. There's several books written, especially Easy Riders and Raging Bowls by Peter Biscayne, which I would encourage anybody to read if they haven't. He invented a certain archetype that anyone who was trying to copy the archetype is just the most annoying person in the world, but as Peter Fonda, he was pretty singular.
Truly. We say to him, he had a great life and a great career. Quick nod to Richard Williams, a really important animator in the history movies. He is the guy responsible for blending the animation with Robert Zemeckis and who framed Roger Rabbit.
He also had a long career as a title sequence guy. He did the title sequence of the Pink Panther movies for Casino Royale in the 60s. A number of different films. He's got this great movie from the 90s at Miramax, botched called The Thief and The Cobbler.
If you're interested in animated films, I would encourage you to seek out The Thief and The Cobbler. Let's close the show here. Did you watch A Little Women trailer? Yes, I did.
And then it was shown before where to go burn it out, which I thought was an understanding of audiences. So I chatted about The Trailer with Chris on this podcast and I will admit I was a little dismissive. I haven't listened to this, actually. And I think for the sake of my relationship with you and with Chris, I'm not going to listen to it.
Okay, fair enough. I will say, I have a sense of what you guys said. What did I said? Well, I'd like to start this with a question.
I'm closing my computer for this. Can you tell me, Sean Pemisee, can you tell me the plot of Little Women? No, not at all. Okay, right.
So I received a text while I was on vacation, thanks to most everyone for respecting my vacation. But I received a text from a good friend of mine, who also happens to be married to Chris Ryan. And she was upset because Chris had accused her of spoiling an aspect of Little Women, which because there is a major event in Little Women that I guess I'm not going to spoil for you. I'm torn with it.
Is Thanos and Little Women? It's very frustrating because Little Women to a certain group, it's like spoiling the Bible? You know, I mean, Little Women is not as good as the Bible. And Little Women has its problems as well.
It's the Bible. But that on the book, Jack it. It's, you know, it's, but it is, it's a text that a lot of people are taught. It's kind of like, you can't, I was once accused of spoiling Jane Eyre in a blog post and I was like, can you really spoil Jane Eyre at this point?
There's a woman in the attic. I don't know what to tell you. You have a different relationship to spoiler culture than most people. Sure.
You are more of a spoiler nihilist. But like, Jane Eyre is a, is a text that it's part of the canon. No, right. It's part of the canon.
Well, I know. So, and that's, that's frustrating because it's a certain group of people. I will also say after receiving the sex, I asked my husband if he could recite the plot of Little Women and he could not. And then I asked him to name, can you name the four little women, Sean?
Joe. Okay. Can I just say, when I, I prompted my husband, what about Joe? And he goes, is that Timothy Chalamet?
No, I know Joe is one of the women. Joe, Mary? No. Little, little, little Rhonda?
Okay. So, so here's the thing is that obviously this is not a formative text for you. And that's okay. Yeah.
That's fine. Because we all, as we have learned, as we discussed at the beginning of this podcast and throughout these podcasts, different formative texts for different people. Little Women is a preformative text for a lot of women. And then the 1994 movie was a pretty formative movie for a lot of women.
I forgot when we were doing our Sententensibility podcast that in the diary, the shooting diary that Emma Thompson wrote, the success of the 1994 Little Women is one of the reasons that people were so keen to make Sententensibility in all of the Austin movies in 1995. This movie being made in general is a big deal. Greta Gerwig doing it with her Greta Gerwig sensibility is a big deal. The cast, Sertia Ronan Florence Puyo, Timothy Chalamet, all in one Emma Watson.
It's that, am I right? Not a demo, that's a movie. Me either. That's why I was like, is it that?
I don't think Meg is the throwaway character. By the way, their names are Meg Joe Bethanyme. And yeah. And like Mary Jo Beth Williams, the actress.
Yeah, sure. And it also just looks fantastic. Yeah. What I said on the podcast is was not mean spirited.
It was just, if I could have had my choice, I would have preferred Greta would make a movie in contemporary times because I think she has a keen sense for contemporary times. And Little Women is not a book I've read and it's not a text that is that important to me. I will watch the movie, certainly. I suspect we will talk about like 400 times here.
It was more just like, I saw the trailer and I was like, that looks like an adaptation of Little Women to me. I wasn't like, that looks like a Greta Gerwig movie. Right. But that's like me saying, like, I wish they, instead of making a comic book movie, they just made like a real life movie, which I feel all of the time.
But sure though, the context that we're describing here, I think, was Oscar season and it was sort of like, what are the films that are coming up that we're really excited about? It wasn't like the mitigating emotional reality of is endgame going to be actually good or is it going to be comic book movie good? It was like, this is Greta Gerwig, she made Lady Bird, you and I both, that's like a top three movie of the year that when it came out. So the scales are different to me.
Sure. I think you should just open your mind to the fact that it not being contemporary or being said, and it's the civil war is when a woman is that just because you don't know that because you've never read it. I don't. But that is not a discriminating or like a deal breaker for a lot of people.
Also, by the way, Spielberg made like a good and it's like, it's just there are the circumstances. The immense power. The final thing that I would say is that I heard more about this trailer from people in my life than I have about anything. It was very well received.
But not even people who like, my friends who don't listen to this podcast or who don't like really read the internet were texting me to be like, this looks so good. I'm so excited about this and they are all women and they're all very excited about it. So I think that there is a major market for this. I agree with you.
I think movies can be a big hit. I think it's gonna be a big time Oscar movie. It's got a great cast. I'm not mad about it.
My honest reaction was just, okay. All right. Sounds good. I'll check it out, which is not how I want it to feel.
But it doesn't really matter what I think because I am but a barnacle on the ever moving ship of Greta Gerwig's career. Great. Fair enough. I accept that.
Let's put that on your Twitter profile. Man, it's good to have you back. Thanks John. Now let's go to a conversation with the gentleman from Radio Silence.
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I'm delighted to be joined by Radio Silence. They have a new film called Ready or Not in theaters tomorrow. I'm going to let them introduce themselves since they are in fact a trio. Let's start with you Tyler Gillette.
This is what I sound like and I'm Matt Betanelli-Hauppen. This is what I sound like and I'm Chad Villella and this is what I sound like. Okay so we'll smooth it a new day. I have not done many three-man interviews and I like that you guys wanted to come in as a team.
You operate as a team. You've made films as a team over the years. There's other members of the teams that you've worked with over the years too. Can you just give me like how this happened, how this came together?
Because you guys have been working together for 10 plus years. You've been a group for since what 2011 now. So how did you all meet and come together to become creative partners? We actually started working together in the digital space and we had designed this kind of DIY film school.
It was first it was a foursome and then it was a fivesome and we started just shooting everything using the money, what little we had in our pockets and the friends that we had you know who were willing to come out and eat cold pizza and play with us for a few days but we learned the filmmaking process together from soup to nuts, everything from the writing to the sound mixing to the craft service. It was this all hands on deck process that certainly we over the course of working together for 10 years have learned how to continue to collaborate and evolve and do bigger things. But yeah it was almost 11 years ago, 10 years ago that we first started working together and that alchemy has lasted and has been a part of our creative careers ever since. Was the goal long term to be studio filmmakers?
Was that what you really wanted? It was. We like wanted from day one we were like we want to make movies and we actually stopped making stuff on YouTube right when YouTube became very profitable. So we made no money there and then we're a team so we continued that.
I had some questions about that. It's not good for your pocketbook when you have a big group but it is a lot of fun. Yeah and if you look at our early YouTube stuff, it wasn't like traditional YouTube stuff, we weren't just talking heads. We actually tried to get some production value into our shorts even though they were only like three minutes long or four minutes long.
We wanted to be able to tell a well structured story in that space. I think John did. The first real thing that took off was a comedy alien prank that had like everybody. The reaction was really great because everybody was like holy shit I was laughing and then also I got really scared and I almost fell out of my seat.
This is a legendary YouTube video. This is like for a lot of people the first YouTube video that they saw I think. So was the goal there? Was it sort of like we're doing these things because they entertained us?
Was it more like this is a reel so that somebody will give us money to do something? Why were you entertaining us? I think at the time we wanted to capitalize on a lot of the prank videos that are out there because they're just like people pranking their friends and it was like okay cool that could be so entertaining for only so long and then actually having something real happen and it was, I think that sent us on one trajectory which led to VHS because we did the alien prank, we did the mountain devil prank and then Brad Niska reached out and we were able to be a part of VHS and just stay in that space of these bumbling guys walking through and but I don't think that I don't think that I mean while certainly making features was always a goal on the horizon for us we were never the stuff that we were making we were always making it because we loved it and it felt like we couldn't not make it including VHS by the way which we had no idea was going to get into Sundance like we produced our short just like we produced everything we had before it you know just on a dime and really fast and it was just about kind of getting together and hanging out with our friends ultimately and our our litmus has always been do we like this and if we do let's do it like that that's been from day one till now you know and it's like it's something that we hope we can keep doing because that's why we like it. Can you guys take you back to that period in particular the sort of VHS because there was a I guess Andy Horr for lack of a better word moment that was identified codified in a way was it good to be a part of that was that exciting with it with their downsides to kind of coming up into the movie making business at that exact time?
I mean it was it was definitely exciting because we were sort of like the the last guys on the team for VHS you know like Brad was saying Brad brought us in at the very end we did this thing that we had no idea that it was going to become what VHS became but and so we didn't even meet all the other like filmmakers until we got to Sundance and then it was like oh now we're like hanging out with all these like people who really look up to you and be like wow this is this wild and then those people all become our friends and like they're the people that we still use as like hey can you check out the movie and tell us what sucks so we can work on you know I mean they become a sounding board for us but to answer your question about that time I think it's weird because that was a found footage thing which was VHS was sort of viewed as like by the people who made it as sort of like a okay let's have fun with found footage and like kind of like a respond sort of middle finger you know it was kind of like an almost an expiration date by that point yeah exactly and then when we we got our next movie it was found footage without that so we tried to kind of go into it being like how do we still make this interesting in a way that that is that after having done VHS we're still sort of like fuck fuck what found footage was let's go somewhere new with it and whether or not that worked is up to the viewer but I mean it was it was an interesting time because I think everybody was really experimenting on something we just always loved yeah I think the other strange thing about coming up at that time specifically and in the genre specifically is you know it's it's one of those and the genre and what is a genre film and it's kind of reach has has grown and has evolved over the last few years you know it feels like horror movies become more mainstream again which we're so excited about and just people are grateful to be a part of but you know having having come off of VHS we certainly it's easy to be pigeonholed as like genre filmmakers which is a great pigeonholed to be in by the way but I think for us you know our because our tone was always a mix of different things we were getting a lot of we were reading a lot of scripts we were getting sent a lot of projects that felt like there was there was automatically like just in the story face some friction between what we would ultimately do and what and what the you know these like hard sort of down the middle genre genre concepts were so that was that was interesting for like a great yet but for a few years it was like it's not our side like not reading ourselves in a lot of this stuff so a lot of things we were developing you know really required a ton of work to infuse infuse those stories with our point of view what did you guys bond over originally like what were the movies that you love that made it seem like you should work together Indiana Jones you know all the right big action is even like the more like 80s comedy is like a three me goes or man's going to be answering this now John Hughes like us yeah where John Ladd is John Hughes exactly we're sending like people who aren't really equipped to deal with any situation in these like extraordinary situations and and we like always been drawn to just bumbling through it a little bit like even in our shorts they're always we're always like in an office mainly because we had an office to shoot at Matt was office manager at New Line so we'd go in on the weekends to shoot our shorts so we could have production value yeah can we find you retroactively for that I mean right so we're always like these like guys who are just like you know dredging through their day at their day job at a desk and then something crazy would happen like there's a time machine in the copy rumor or you know they're playing on their lunch break and just having a good time with just average guys going through the extraordinary how does that go to horror then since you guys just named nine classic comedies it's funny it's we would we would always like especially when I think about earlier shorts it's like we had like alien prank videos and then we had like happy Halloween and we had treasure hunt and we'd birthday party and all of these have one major horror element all of them uh always happy with the whole office yeah that's pretty dark on the back all right you know that was a different era but uh we always had a genre element that that we love it was always like one part comedy one part adventure one part horror and it's just it's just what even if you look at our VHS short it's like it's essentially a comedy that then these until it's very much comedy get pulled into a horror movie and that's what was always so fun does and then honestly the more we got to explore that especially something like ready or not it was like oh yes this is like exactly what we want to be doing because now we can go further with the last further with the same and I just really amped up but the skill set that got honed early on for us was you know the conventions of that digital space are different and so you're you're allowed there's you're given more permission as a creator to pivot between tones because it's short format things have to have to happen fast like the structure's a little bit weird and all over the place so there's a bit of leeway just with the storytelling tools that you have but I think what we learned is that for those tones to work and for the pivot between those moments to work you have to be with characters you have to be with them you have to believe their reactions you have to see yourself in those reactions and we actually talked about it as a pivot it was just here we have a character this is the character story and these are the awful things are gonna go these are the obstacles that yeah and it would be like and maybe there's a monster yeah and maybe it's a game exactly yeah and it would be exactly that it would be less less genrey and more how is this character gonna get through this wildly ridiculous nonsense and ready or not is no exception to this I mean it would be what we learned what we learned doing our stuff way back in the day has absolutely transported us to this project and the ability for a ready or not to kind of pivot tones and be a sort of mashup of different things it's all about walking into the world with grace before I get too far and ready or not you mentioned that you don't get to make the money that you would get to make it right and on the other hand you did get a chance to really experiment a lot on youtube and you indicated that maybe mad things have changed in terms of what you can and can't do now is there like a relief that you were there at that time because I think there's a lot of sort of fear of reprisal fear cancellation for anybody that's is trying to do something that is a little bit different yeah are you guys happy that you entered you did something you would have done differently about those early stages youtube was wonderful for us like as I was it was the early days it was like I mean we were making stuff like 2007 to 2011 I think roughly like that time there and and it was still when like people went to youtube to see things they may or may not like and then to either just not watch it or be supportive so it was like it was when it was still I know this sounds shocking now but it was still like people were like hey cool good work it was a genuine interaction it was really supportive and it was and that goes for actually youtube itself too like they would put our we had this interactive adventure series and they would put that on the front page all the time and that's also on the front page like a thing on youtube but I think it allowed us not only to you know kind of keep making stuff but it encouraged us to be like oh something about this kind of weird swing we're taking is connecting with people that's cool so you guys made a couple films you contributed to another anthology as you're going along do you have a sense of sort of like what kind of a career you want to have the idea to say we are genre filmmakers we want to stay inside of genre we want to collide those three different types of films you're talking about through everything that we're doing or you're like we're actually more of a company and a brand because once you give yourself a name like this and you become a unit there's an expectation that you can do more than just make a movie right i mean we we think we think of the like creating and this is why we're so excited about it or not is that creating like a voice that someone can go to this is like the best version i have no idea if we're gonna accomplish this i'm just saying like a bitch away yeah is like if you can go and say oh i'm gonna go see a radio not i mean a radio silence thing and you kind of know what you're getting into in the way that like with all of our favorite filmmakers you're like okay might not be what i'm expecting but i know it's gonna have something that is specific that i could only get here like that's always been kind of our goal like let's have our own voice let's kind of have our own little niche um and the fact that radio not is not is not really classifiable was really was really important to us in a lot of ways i mean i think we we will always make genre movies we love making genre movies but ready or not present an opportunity for us to kind of like walk the tightrope in a different way and and and show people the skill set that we had honed you know earlier earlier on in our kind of bigger action adventure stuff that um that certainly opens us up to maybe some other projects and some other ideas that we have always loved and i've always felt a kinship with and so i think that for us for us um there are so many things that we love and are interested in and and that variety is something that we are we it feels like we're just now at the beginning of really getting to explore and and red you're not is kind of the entry point of that i was very surprised to see that this is a fox or chile movie so we are thrilled that it is obviously a great company that puts out great films how can you explain to me how this movie happened that the script i soon came to you guys in some form uh yeah so it basically came around to us twice the first time we didn't get it um and went there and the producers trip vince and jamey van de bill went down the line with another um director and it came back around and they just poorly the first time and when it came back around we're like let's really get this because we love the tone um guy busic ryan christopher murphy wrote a fantastic script it was a lot of things that we loved in it and then we were debating whether to go out to stars first or two studios and you know we're pedaling around with both of those ideas and we decided to go out to studios and we went into fox searchlight on the day after the election of 2016 and we pitched it so it was like a dire mood in the room and we were able to get dantrym we still don't understand how that works yeah no it was just everybody's baffled and then we go and talk about this like this crazy movie about the one percent and the original ending and it was even more on tone for what actually happened is basically the original ending was oh don't give away this milish um but like dantrym was dire is dire very dire uh dantrym and richard weas were very like they were they were thrilled by it and they got on board right away and yeah i think the challenge was always finding a place that was as weird as the script and as the group of people who were you know who were down there down there and those guys are fucking weird man in the best way like they the notes that we kept getting from them were in the development process were like make it we're like let's go crazy like make this crazy like they they were so supportive of just making something that was that was outside of the box people they didn't want it to feel like a box searchlight movie but they wanted it to be a fox searchlight movie like because i know we made a couple choices that were sort of like the the cliche searchlight choice and then they'd be like guys not right what would that be like the slightly more like you know i don't know how to say without sound like dick but the slightly more like arty choices you know what i mean like don't don't you guys do your thing don't try to do our thing like and then you know it's really it's really empowering when someone tells you that like just trust yourselves like don't try to find something so when you're working on a project this how do you work together as a team is there one person that is better at something than something else how do you collaborate i'm curious how it mechanically works no 100 i mean that's that's exactly right i think that over the course of working together we've all we've all come to have specific specialties and recognize those specialties in each other and there's a vin diagram why are we starting with it you know it was like hey like and there's a real vin diagram so we all know enough about all of the processes that we can call bullshit on each other if you know if there's a choice that's being made or if there's something that's not working we can actually have a really productive collaborative conversation about it but for us it's all about creating friction with the material really early on but way before you're ever in production so that you are by the time you get there everyone on the team has a really clear idea of what the right of what the right thing is what is that the target what is that friction with the material preparation there we talk about weekend and we spent a lot of time being like okay well how are we gonna shoot this scene what's this thing about for the characters so that when we all go on on set it's like everybody we're all aiming at the same target and that's really ultimately the goal and yeah there's no shoot where there's not going to be some problem you have to solve and we've been all on the same page and we know how to solve and the best idea wins because we know what the bullseye is how did you go about getting this cast this is a very interesting cast isn't it yeah we we are very lucky that we got this cast because this cast came together over a very short period of time a right before we were starting to shoot i mean our armpits are like a week before yeah like the office wall we had you know like all the cast you know the character names and then you know as you put like a headshot there as you kind of fill it out and we were like we're up in toronto we're like a week from shooting and we're like why do we only have the sand tomorrow and it's not as whiteboards or just like flaring you can't not see how empty it is when you'll get into the office but it is it's it's i think we got really lucky uh we cast you know it's almost all Canadian we did a lot of casting up there um except of course like anemic bell and adam brody and the the casting directors out there were great and to their credit i think melonnie who plays emily christian who plays fish niki who plays haleen and alice and and actually maybe even john we're all the first or second audition we saw and henry well we never saw henry henry did not audition you just hired henry you had a good time with him but they were the first audition you saw and it was like this thing we're like oh my god this is great like she's perfect he's perfect and then you know you've watched two more days of auditions you're like am i crazy but that first person we saw was awesome and that was for at least five four or five of the cast members um and then everybody everybody once everybody met it just felt like they don't know each other and some of them had like marco brian who who we chased for a while marco was like a real he was the key for us because that character and i mean how spoiler each other i would say not too spoiler but how much can we trust everybody isn't is an under question well that that marco brian role of alex is like he has a lot to play with that i think you know someone who's not really thinking about it on a deeper level might go a little more surface with and he really brought something that was like oh i can yeah you're with me but you know you're kind of the most complicated character in the movie um yeah i mean we we're incredibly we're incredibly lucky and i think the other kind of the other thing that we had on our side was a really tight script that had really specific characters written in it so if if you read the script and you like the script the chances are you loved it for the same reasons that we did and all the characters had really interesting uh had really interesting perspectives and there was a lot of a lot of collision and debate between the characters that that there's a lot to play and so that the piece of writing this in this amazing script definitely helped us attract you know there's no talent that's in the movie there's no scene where somebody is just present like they're always doing something you know like whether that's like intellectually or physically but like there's always something happening for every character which is just wonderful to shoot so much so that there were many moments on the shoot where we'd be set up on a shot on someone specific and you look around the room and like Henry was this was always always doing this he was always doing something in character off camera that i was like fuck if we had another camera we've just have it on Henry all of the time he's always doing something interesting i mean it's just everyone had so much to play with and um i think the exploration for them was was a real fun opportunity for everybody i'm very excited to see everybody tonight it'll be the first time we see the whole group together again since like It'll be a lot of fun to see everybody what was challenging about this i assume this is the biggest production you've had it is it is no no we guess that will do as bigger production yeah but the budget of the production no no okay no more the more more sets certainly more cast shooting conventionally obviously more more tools at your disposal but that means more crew and you know the apparatus just as it was much larger on this i would say that the challenge was really just time and money time yeah it was probably on every movie ever sure i do you guys have 26 yeah it's not a lot and it was an our 26th day was a day that was not on the original schedule we had a We had a 25-day schedule. And then our producer, Tripp Vincent, was like, we're going to get a 26-day. Don't you guys worry about it? And we were like, well, we are definitely worried about it because we are putting scenes on that 26-day.
It might be neat. What he told us was to get that 26-day, we have to literally not go over a single minute in the first two weeks. In the first two weeks. And we were like, oh my god.
So how do you do them? You just shoot like hell. We did it crazy. The 10th day of shooting, we were shooting the car flip scene.
And it started snowing and stuff just wasn't working. And we did technically go over seven or eight minutes. But I think because it was the end of day 10, we still got it. And out of those 25 days, I think we put Samara through the ringer, 25 of them, right?
Out of those two days. She was there for 25. And there was always a gag or a stunt going on with her. And she was just fantastic through that entire process.
There was never a day where it was just characters talking to each other. No, no, no. It was insane. Man, but when there was, I was like, oh, fucking act.
We just went for like three hours. We never had more than, I think it was a two or three take show. Like, and occasionally we'd go over, you know, obviously, but like for the most part, it was like, if we got it on the second take, we were moving on. Wow.
So tell me about Samara. I feel like she's developing a little bit of a reputation why her, why is she the star? I mean, she's, she, we could go, how long do we have? Yeah.
She, she blew us away from the first time we sat down with her to talk about it. We had one really awkward sky call with her. Yeah, she was in her makeup from, from Guns of Kimba's. You didn't have, she didn't have eyebrows.
She like had tattoos on her, on her face and we were like, oh, this is an interesting, this is an interesting idea. For great. And it was, you know, it was Skype around the world and it was like cutting it out. You know, I was like, I don't know.
I was awkward. But then we actually sat down with her. And she got that the character couldn't just be one, no, it couldn't be just, I'm scared and I'm running and I'm screaming, you know, it was like, got to make it more. It's got to be, we need that vulnerability, but we also need like a real core foundational power and strength.
And she kind of just embodies both of those as well as one of our favorite things, a sense of humor. And so she brings her sense of humor to it that it just, like for me at least her sense of humor ties the whole thing together, how she's able to be like in the most dire moment and still find something funny, whether it's big or little, it was like, it just not a little lie. It's just like a little texture that, yeah, just something to make the character not one note, you know what I mean? Like, and she was so conscious of that every single day of the shoot.
Like, how can we make this scene not the most basic version for her character? There were a lot of opportunities or moments where characters, where she could have been self-conscious to and she's just the least, she's so just fearless about how she approaches the work and was so down to just like do the weirdest, most fun thing, to make the craziest choice and be totally comfortable in it. And it's why it feels like such a singular, unique performance. She's really great.
She's great. She also, she does her homework. I mean, she works really hard, you know, and she cares. And then she does the same thing, and this is true for all of her cast, they, then they still have fun with it.
You know what I mean? It's not just like, this is liver die craft. It was like, let's do our work, and then let's go in and make it something that's entertaining. What are you guys going to do next, you know?
It's a great question. It's a whole way. Yeah, a whole way, a whole way. Yeah, no, we don't know right now.
No, I mean, I would say that this movie is definitely focused our attention on the tone that we love, and that we have returned to, honestly. So I think that our compass has gotten more specific, which is great. And hopefully, whatever's next is going to be, have some of the similar elements. I can say what we hope to bring on in the next project is the amount of fun that we had making this one.
It was such an incredible. We'd love to do something. I mean, I'm not a team group of people. I mean, Cass, or I know we're trying to work with the producers and writers right now to find something else to do together.
This is kind of a practical question, but how does it work with the DGA and getting credit? The whole way that you need to get credit. I only ask because I had Chats of Helsinki and David Leachen here earlier this year, and of course they made films together and didn't get credited together. And, you know, I'm sure there's only so much you can say about arbitration and things like that.
But as a team, it's rare that there are teams that are not brothers or sisters working together on films. Is that was that a challenge for you guys? Yeah, it's a huge challenge. I mean, Matt and I are in the DGA as co-directors.
And to get that status, you have to get a waiver from the DGA. And it's a pretty insane trial by fire. You have to sit in front of the board of directors, which for us was, I don't, it was also during the Academy week when we went in. So it was like, oh my God, I'm so nervous just being in this room, let alone having all these people ask us very specific questions.
And they dug through all of the history of all the stuff that we'd made. And thankfully we had made so much together and it was so clear, we could speak so specifically to our process, having go directed for, I mean, it was like seven years at the time or six years at the time. So it was pretty nuts. It was pretty nuts.
But you made it. And we had a very tense hour after it, where we were like, don't know what this is. And honestly, we didn't know what we were going to do if they didn't give it to us. You know, it was one of those things where we saved our asses.
Yeah, John Favreau was really the one. It was kind of going off the rails. We were getting grilled. I'm like, well, you did this digital thing.
You did this digital thing. You guys weren't working together. And John Favreau was like, wait a minute, guys. I'm a director.
I came up doing, I was an actor and I was a writer and doing all this stuff. Like these guys just want to make stuff together. Like, let's just hear him out. And I think ultimately he sort of steered the ship in our favor.
Yeah. And then as far as the trio goes, we've just made a really strong, like choice of loyalty. We're working together. We are continuing to do our process the way we've done our process.
And it is what it is. And sometimes it feels weird to people. But as soon as people actually get in there with us, they're like, oh, OK. This is not unlike most things.